Costing 10 billion dollars, weighing more than six tons, and located 1.5 million kilometers away, the new space telescope "James Webb Space Telescope," abbreviated as JWST, is set to bring us closer to distant planets than ever before.
This telescope is groundbreaking, poised to revolutionize astronomy, according to Antonella Nota, JWST Project Scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA).
One of the telescope's tasks is the observation of planets that orbit distant stars, known as exoplanets. Currently, 4,461 of them are known, with a few handfuls being added every month. The focus is on those planets that possess their own atmosphere. Webb's mission is to examine whether water, methane, or oxygen are present there, as these would indicate the potential existence of life.
Many are rather skeptical. The slightest disturbances in measurement or errors in the statistical analysis of the observational data could easily lead astray. However, Antonella Nota remains optimistic: "The ability to study such distant worlds might be beyond what astronomers would bet on today," says the ESA researcher. "One thing Hubble (the predecessor of JWST) has taught us: The greatest discoveries have always been those that nobody placed bets on."
Here, there are more intriguing pieces of information.
Current images of the James Webb Space Telescope are continuously released by the ESA.
Enjoy your journey into our universe!
