The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

About JWST
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized
space telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013. JWST will find the first
galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to
our own Milky Way Galaxy. It will peer through dusty clouds to see
stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own
Solar System. It's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the
infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability
in the visible range.

It will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a
sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade
won't fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open only
once JWST is in outer space. JWST will reside in an orbit about 1.5
million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.

The James Webb Space Telescope was named after a former NASA
Administrator.
 Four Themes

Planetary Systems and the Origins of Life


The Birth of Stars and Protoplanetary Systems


Assembly of Galaxies


First Light and Reionization
 Planets & Origins of Life
The first planet outside our solar
system was discovered in 1995.
Since then, we have discovered a
multitude of planets around other
stars. We have come to the
realization that planets may in fact
be quite common. Most of the
planets discovered so far are large
gas giants like Jupiter, although
modern detection techniques are
now helping scientists detect
smaller planets. The ultimate
objective of the search is to find
another Earth and perhaps even
signs of life elsewhere in the
Universe.
 The Birth of Stars and
Protoplanetary Systems
Stars, like our Sun, can be thought of as “basic particles” of the Universe,
just as atoms are “basic particles” of matter. Groups of stars make up
galaxies, while planets and ultimately life arise around stars. Although
stars have been the main topic of astronomy for thousands of years,
we have begun to understand them in detail only in recent times
through the advent of powerful telescopes and computers.
A hundred years ago, scientists did not know that stars are powered by
nuclear fusion, and 50 years ago they did not know that stars are
continually forming in the Universe. Researchers still do not know the
details of how clouds of gas and dust collapse to form stars, or why
most stars form in groups, or exactly how planetary systems form.
Young stars within a star-forming region interact with each other in
complex ways. The details of how they evolve and release the heavy
elements they produce back into space for recycling into new
generations of stars and planets remains to be determined through a
combination of observation and theory.
 The Assembly of Galaxies

How did the very first galaxies form? How did we

end up with the large variety of galaxies we see
today? We now know that extremely large
black holes live at the centers of most galaxies
– what is the nature of the relationship between
the black holes and the galaxy that hosts them?
These are some of the fundamental questions
about galaxies that the JWST will tackle.
 First Light and Reionization

Until around 400 million years after the Big Bang,

the Universe was a very dark place. There
were no stars, and there were no galaxies.
Scientists would like to unravel the story of
exactly what happened after the Big Bang. The
James Webb Space Telescope will pierce this
veil of mystery and reveal the story of the
formation of the first stars and galaxies in the
Universe.
James Webb Space Telescope vs.
Hubble Space Telescope
Size

HST is 13.2 meters (43.5 ft.) long and its

maximum diameter is 4.2 meters (14 ft.) It is about
the size of a large tractor-trailer truck. By contrast,
JWST's sunshield is about 22 meters by 12 meters
(72 ft x 39 ft). A Boeing 737-200 is 100 feet long!
HST is 13.2 meters (43.5 ft.) long and its maximum
diameter is 4.2 meters (14 ft.) It is about the size of
a large tractor-trailer truck. By contrast, JWST's
sunshield is about 22 meters by 12 meters (72 ft x
39 ft). A Boeing 737-200 is 100 feet long!
JWST will have a 6.5 meter diameter primary mirror, which would give it a significant
larger collecting area than the mirrors available on the current generation of space
telescopes. HST's mirror is a much smaller 2.4 meters in diameter and its
corresponding collecting area is 4.5 m2, giving JWST around 7 times more
collecting area! JWST will have significantly larger field of view than the NICMOS
camera on HST (covering more than ~15 times the area) and significantly better
spatial resolution than is available with the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope.
 Orbit

The Hubble Space Telescope orbits around the Earth at an altitude of ~570 km above it.

JWST will not actually orbit the Earth - instead it will sit at the L2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million
km away! Because HST is in earth orbit, it was able to be launched into space by the space
shuttle. JWST will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket and because it won't be in earth orbit, it
is not designed to be serviced by the space shuttle.

A Lagrange point is one of the five positions in interplanetary space where a small object (like
a satellite) can be relatively stationary with respect to two larger objects (like the Earth and
the Sun). It is analogous to an earth satellite in a geosynchronous orbit that allows it satellite
to stay stationary over one spot on the Earth. At a Lagrange point, a satellite can stay "fixed"
in space, rather than orbiting the Earth.
JWST is an international collaboration among NASA, the European
Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Over 1000 people in more than 17 countries are developing the
James Webb Space Telescope.