FINALLY, we are about to see further back in time than ever before – and all in glorious high resolution. On 12 July, NASA will release the first full-colour images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which promises to transform our understanding of how the universe was made.
It is a moment to savour. These first snapshots are the culmination of a decades-long engineering effort, not to mention a suspenseful launch and commissioning phase in which the telescope’s origami-style sunshield had to unfold without a hitch and the 18 hexagonal segments of its mirror align with astonishing precision. Last month, there was another scare as the $10-billion telescope was struck by a small space rock.
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Not to worry. The JWST is working perfectly, and it sounds like those first images will be worth the wait.
NASA has said that next week’s release will include a deep-field image, revealing a patch of the universe as it looked a few hundred million years after the big bang, and the spectrum of an atmosphere around an exoplanet. That is a fitting curtain-raiser for a telescope designed to reveal the universe’s early history – the first stars, the invisible matter that brought them into being and the gargantuan black holes that sculpted galaxies – and the properties of potentially habitable planets orbiting other stars.
And so the science begins. Precisely what scientists granted precious time with the JWST during its first observation cycle will look at, and how they will address some of the cosmos’s biggest mysteries, is the subject of our cover story.
This is just the start: all being well, the telescope will be gathering data and images for the next 20 years. It will leave a stunning legacy. However, there is also the question of whether this might be the last of the scientific megaprojects, given that nothing remotely comparable in ambition or expense is currently funded. Let’s hope not, because you don’t have to be a scientist to be moved by what we are about to see.
