New Space Telescope Should Expand Science’s View and Knowledge of the Universe
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope should see more than Hubble.
The Hubble Space Telescope has given scientists a better understanding of how planets and galaxies formed since it was launched in 1990.
But it has its limits.
“We thought we would see the very first galaxies being born after the ‘big bang’, and the Hubble showed us we can’t do that,” says NASA’s John Mather. He’s overseeing the development and launch of the new James Webb Space Telescope. Webb led NASA from 1961-68. Mather, who shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, says the new scope is larger and more powerful than Hubble.
“We are going to look farther back into space, and farther back in time,” Mather says of the Webb telescope. The difference is in Webb’s ability to detect infrared light.
“The Hubble emits its own infrared light, just like you do,” Mather says.
“If you were as tiny as a bumblebee hovering out there at the distance of the moon, we would be able to find you.”–Dr. John Mather, astrophysicist and Nobel Prize winner.
Mather says the $8 billion Webb telescope will be about four times farther than the moon, which is almost 239,000 miles from Earth.
“We’ve had a few delays lately, so we’re probably going to have to ask (Congress) for a little more money, but as a fraction of the total it’s small change,” Mather says.
While the new telescope should give scientists a better understanding of the universe, Hubble has taught them plenty already. For example, Mather says Hubble discovered that every galaxy seems to have a black hole in the middle.
“More recently we found out that we could actually detect the atmospheres of planets going around other stars,” Mather says.
The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch from the European Space Agency‘s South American spaceport in 2020. Click on the audio player to hear the conversation.
