James Webb Space Telescope: NASA's powerful space observatory, explained

Speaker 1: What's worth 10 billion. It is about to unravel in space. No, Jeff Bezos, isn't taking another post divorce, rocket flight. It's NASA's folding space observatory, the James web space telescope it's covered in literal gold and it's a hundred times more powerful than Hubble, but it's also been mired in controversy. So why is this spacecraft such a big deal? Well, I'm about to explain it all with a little help from optimist prime. Seriously, let's roll. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Imagine a telescope so powerful that here on earth, it could see a Bumble bee on the moon. Now put that tele telescope in space and set it on a mission to find stars 10 billion times more faint than the stars we can see with the naked eye stars that were formed in the early days after the big bang. That is the James web space telescope, and it's searching for light. That's traveled through space for more than [00:01:00] 13 billion years. I know what you're thinking. Why do we need telescopes in space? When we have perfectly good telescopes here at home on earth? Well, telescopes on earth have to contend with a lot of interference, bad weather, light pollution. And then there's our atmosphere. As light passes through our atmosphere from space, it gets distorted. In fact, some wavelengths get blocked all together. When you put a telescope into space, you avoid all that [00:01:30] noise. It's like lifting your car out of Friday afternoon gridlock and putting it straight on the interstate. In 1990, NASA launched the Hubble space. Telescope Hubble was designed to take of space from space. It orbits earth, 15 times a day, about 340 miles above its surface. And it's made more than 1.5 million observations in its lifetime. If you've ever downloaded a screen saver or a desktop wallpaper, you've [00:02:00] probably seen some of those images, Speaker 1: So many good memories, but Hubble is getting old and technology has improved, which is where the James webspace telescope comes in. It was built by NASA, the European space agency and the Canadian space agency to be a successor to Hubble. Now I could explain this bit, but [00:02:30] instead I'm going to defer to legendary actor and friend of the show. Peter Cullen. Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Peter Cullen, the voice of transformers, optimist prime NASA's Hubble space. Telescope has brought the wonders of the universe to us here on earth, but as powerful as Hubble is, there are secrets about the cosmos that even it cannot reveal. Speaker 1: Don't go back to me. This guy's voice is amazing. Keep rolling. Speaker 2: Do unlock those secrets. NASA is building [00:03:00] Hubble scientific successor. The James Webb's face telescope. Speaker 1: Thanks Pete. He's right. The James web space telescope is bigger than its rocket and it has to be folded up origami style before unfilling in space, but it's big by design cutting with that huge gold mirror. It's 6.5 meters wide or about 21 feet. And it's made up of 18 hexagonal segments. It's six times bigger than the mirror on Hubble. [00:03:30] And it's designed to capture as much light as possible. Now James Webb is mostly capturing infrared light while Hubble captures optical at ultra of violent. So why infrared? Well, it's kind of like the infrared cameras that SPS you in movies. It can help you see things you otherwise. Wouldn't see. According to NASA, when stars and planets are forming, they're hidden by clouds of dust that dust blocks a visible light, but it doesn't block infrared light. This by side [00:04:00] from NASA shows just how much more you can see when you're measuring infrared light. Speaker 1: There are whole new galaxies that come into view. Now the mirrors on James web are covered in actual gold because gold is ideal for reflecting infrared light. There's about a golf falls worth of gold on the whole telescope, but it's in a layer that's 700 atoms thick because the telescope is capturing infrared light. It's super sensitive to heat. In fact, it's designed to operate at [00:04:30] about 40 degrees above absolute zero, and that's where the tennis court size sun shield comes in. It has five layers separated by vacuum to protect the telescopes instruments from the sun's heat. Of course, in a game of word association, if I said massive, super cold origami spacecraft, that's covered in gold blasted 1 million miles into space before unfolding autonomously to collect invisible pictures. I'm sure your first word wouldn't be [00:05:00] inexpensive. As my waiter said to me in Las Vegas, that time I ordered three seafood towers, this one's gonna come with a big bill. Speaker 1: According to the us government accountability office costs on James Webb, nearly doubled between 2009 and 2021 to $9.7 billion. And its launch was delayed by over seven years, the Gaos assessment, this is one of the most complex projects NASA has ever built. Of course, I would've gone with the headline Hubble [00:05:30] doubles to and trouble more delays and costs have doubled. But then again, there's a reason that I don't work for the government accountability office. Still there have been a lot of delays in 2018, put off the launch by two years to complete more testing, then came the pandemic. Then just a month before the scheduled launch, things were delayed. Again, due to the quote sudden unplanned release of a clamp band NASA. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. If [00:06:00] you're launching and you know, it clamp your bands, but even without these delays, complexity costs money, take the mirrors. Speaker 1: For example, NASA says any variation in their shape has to be smaller than the wavelengths of light. They're observing so less than a fraction of a human hair problems with hubs mirrors meant that it had to be repaired in space, but you can't do that when you're on million miles from earth on James Webb. And it's not just mechanical [00:06:30] issues that have plagued this project. The James Webb name itself has also been controversial. It was, is named after James ewe, who worked for the state department and was NASA administrator during the Apollo program. But Webb has been criticized for his alleged role in the so-called lavender scare, a series of policies that saw L G B T employees purged from federal government jobs in the fifties and sixties in early 20, 21 more than 12 of hundred people signed a petition calling on [00:07:00] NASA to change the name saying that under Webb's leadership people were persecuted in a statement. Speaker 1: A NASA spokesperson told CNET that NASA's history office conducted an exhaustive search on James Webb and his career, and found no evidence at this point, that warrant changing the name of the James web space telescope beyond the name. This telescope will still perform some remarkable science, not just observing stars from billions of years [00:07:30] ago, but also taking snapshots of planets beyond our solar system and looking at the molecules that make up their atmospheres. The tele is set to make its first observations about six months after launching and from there, we'll see what this space observatory is really made of after so much anticipation. Those first images are going to be well worth the weight.