The Hubble successor will take off at Christmas: Looking Back at the 13.5 Billion Years of The Universe Exploring Human Origins

According to the existing schedule, there are less than 24 hours to go, and the James Webb space telescope will be launched from the European Space Agency's South American launch base on Christmas Day, further revealing the mystery of the origin of the universe.

Although the name sounds like a telescope, the Weber Space Telescope cost a full $11 billion, and NASA, the European and Canadian Space Agency for a full two decades to develop. According to the plan, after the Ariane-5 launch vehicle launches it, it will eventually be deployed in orbit 932,000 miles from Earth. With it operational in mid-2022, the Webb telescope will help scientists study light in the universe with a much older history, while also providing a clearer view of other galaxies.

For comparison, the Hubble telescope launched by NASA thirty years ago is only 340 miles from Earth, and the main significance is to avoid the impact of the atmosphere on the observation ground. According to the existing plan, hubble telescopes will also continue to be in service for 10-20 years.

According to the media quoted telescope researchers, the Weber space telescope is of great significance for in-depth understanding of how the early universe, planets and the Milky Way formed. The new telescope is expected to date back 13.5 billion years, just a few hundred million years before the "Big Bang" theory occurred. At the same time, the Webb telescope can also clearly observe the targets that the Weber telescope has previously discovered, and the new telescope can penetrate interstellar dust and gas.

The Weber telescope is also tasked with finding Earth-like planets, and the Andromeda Galaxy , which looks exactly like Earth's Milky Way , is also a target 2.5 million light-years away. The telescope has many forms of spectral imaging that can be used to study the composition of stars and planets.

It is undeniable that to complete the above mission, the Weber telescope must first ensure that it can accurately run to the target orbit, and the steps such as unfolding the solar panels and starting the orbit adjustment rocket during the 29-day journey need to be completed precisely. The telescope's ultimate goal is the second Lagrange point, where the gravitational pull of the Earth and the Sun is balanced, reducing the vehicle's own consumption to maintain its orbit.

Once the orbital deployment is complete, the spacecraft will unfold a telescope consisting of 18 hexagonal mirrors and undergo a series of commissioning over the next six months.

(Source: NASA Video)

Alex Ji, a near-field cosmologist at the University of Chicago, said in an interview with the media that the Webb telescope is expected to achieve the same level of influence as Hubble, and those collected images will firmly capture the public imagination.