NASA is scheduled to unveil a new image from the James Webb Space Telescope on Wednesday a year after it first stunned the world with stunning views of the distant cosmos.
Webb, the most powerful orbiting observatory, launched in December 2021 from French Guiana, on a million-mile (1.6 million-kilometer) journey to a region called the second Lagrange point.
Its first full-color image was unveiled by President Joe Biden on July 11, 2022: the clearest view yet of the early universe, stretching back 13 billion years.
The next wave included “mountains” and “valleys” from a star-forming region, called the Cosmic Cliffs, in a region of space called the Carina Nebula; and a grouping of five galaxies joined in a celestial dance, called Stephan’s Quintet.
NASA has remained coy about the nature of Wednesday’s launch, which will be available on its website at 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time (3:30 p.m. IST).
Webb features a main mirror measuring over 21 feet (6.5 meters) that is made up of 18 gold-plated hexagonal segments, as well as a five-layered sunshade the size of a tennis court.
Unlike its predecessor, Hubble, it operates primarily in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to peer further back into the beginning of time and better penetrate the dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today.
Key discoveries include some of the first galaxies formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the finding of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system, and, in our own corner of the forest, stunning views news from the planet Jupiter. .
Webb has enough fuel for a 20-year mission, promising a new era of astronomy.
It will soon be joined in orbit by Europe’s Euclid Space Telescope, which launched on July 1 on a mission to shed light on two of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark energy and dark matter.
