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The forecast is that the James Webb will reach its final destination, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, in two weeks. Astronomers hope to look back in time (see details below) until 100 million years after the Big Bang.
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The telescope will still be aligned and calibrated. Only in 5 months will the agency receive the first images of him, as announced on the social network Twitter:
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In the publication, it is possible to hear an audio announcing the implantation of the telescope’s mirrors, and, next to it, images of the scientists of the Nasa celebrating:
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NASA scientists celebrate the deployment of mirrors from the James Webb telescope, which took its final form in space this Saturday (8). — Photo: Reproduction/Twitter Nasa
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The James Webb is so big it had to be folded to fit the rocket that launched it. The riskiest operation came earlier this week, when the tennis court-sized sunshield swung open, providing sub-zero shadow for the mirror and infrared detectors.
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NASA scientists celebrate the deployment of mirrors from the James Webb telescope, which took its final form in space this Saturday (8). — Photo: Bill Ingalls/Nasa via AP
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Flight controllers in Baltimore, in the US state of Maryland, then began to open the primary mirror on the sixth (7), unfolding the left side like a hanging table.
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The primary mirror is made of beryllium, a light yet robust and frost-resistant metal, reports the American news agency Associated Press. Each of its 18 segments is coated with an ultra-thin layer of gold, highly reflective of infrared light:
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The James Webb Space Telescope’s 18-segment mirror will capture infrared light from some of the first galaxies that formed. — Photo: Reproduction/Twitter Nasa
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The coffee table-sized hexagonal mirror segments are expected to be adjusted over the next few weeks, “so they can focus on stars, galaxies and alien worlds that may contain atmospheric signs of life,” the AP said.
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The James Webb is the new space telescope of the Nasa (JWST, its acronym in English: James Webb Space Telescope). He is basically a large space observatory that can see objects – such as stars, galaxies and exoplanets – super distant in space.
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Its mass is 6.5 tons. It cost $10 billion (about R$56.4 billion).
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It will allow astronomers to literally see things in the Universe that they couldn’t see before – like the first galaxies that appeared in it.
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NASA’s James Webb Telescope. — Photo: Reproduction/Twitter Nasa Webb Telescope
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This is possible for two reasons: the first is that James Webb is too big: its primary mirror is 6.5m in diameter (almost 3 times larger than that of the Hubble telescope, its predecessor).
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The second is that he can see in infrared. Hubble could only see a limited range of this wavelength.
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As infrared light has a longer wavelength than others, James Webb will be able to look further back in time – and see the first galaxies that formed at the beginning of the Universe.
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It’s like looking into the past.
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James Webb being launched into space on December 25th. — Photo: Reproduction
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“The farther [está a galáxia], more in the past. It’s kind of a crazy effect of relativity, but you can think of it like this: when you’re looking at something very far away, you’re looking at something that happened a long time ago — billions of years ago — and it just took a long time for light to get there. here”, explains astronomer Thiago Signorini Gonçalves, from the Valongo Observatory at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
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In her own words Nasa, the telescope goes “fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe“.
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Watch VIDEOS about astronomy and space exploration:
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