The “James Webb Space Telescope” (JWST), built jointly by space agencies in Europe, the USA and Canada, is intended to explore the oldest galaxies in space. It took off from the European space station Kourou in French Guiana and is on board an Ariane launcher.
The journey to the target orbit, which is around 1.5 million kilometers away, takes around four weeks. Scientists hope that the images from the James Webb Telescope will provide information about the time after the Big Bang around 13.8 billion years ago, among other things. The first data and images from the telescope are not expected until summer at the earliest. At the start of the mission, NASA had identified 344 critical points that threatened the planned use of the telescope.
According to the operator, the James Webb telescope was developed for around 30 years and cost around ten billion dollars (8.84 billion euros). It exceeds the capabilities of the well-known Hubble telescope many times over. Austrian researchers and a space company from Vienna are also involved in the spectacular project
Source: Nachrichten
