NASA has announced that it is building the world’s largest telescope to date. The telescope is expected to allow scientists to witness cosmic events that occurred over 13.5 billion years ago, which was only 220 million years after the Big Bang (a very short amount of time in the life of the universe). It has been named the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and will be 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been used in recent years to give scientists images and information on large expanses in the universe. The JWST has been speculated to be operational within the next three years.

JWST project scientist Mark Clampin was quoted as saying, “What the Webb will really be doing is looking at the first galaxies of the Universe.” He added, “We will also be able, with these capabilities, to look in very dark parts of the universe where stars are being born.”

The JWST has a mirror with a diameter of 6.5 meters, three times that of the aging Hubble Telescope. The lens itself will have 70 times more light-gathering capacity than the Hubble. The telescope will include four cameras and spectrometers, devices designed to interpret light and make it into data and images scientists can analyze and understand.

Matt Greenhouse, another JWST scientist, explains, “We have sensors on board, equipment on board that will enable us to study the atmosphere of exoplanets spectroscopically, so we will be able to understand the composition of those atmospheres,” “We can make big progress in the search for life.”

Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been orbiting the Earth for the last 25 years, the JWST will thrust its way out to one of the Lagrangian points, a set of five equilibrium points present in every Earth-Moon system. This specific Lagrangian point is nearly 930,000 miles away from the Earth. This position allows the telescope to stay far enough away from the Sun to prevent overheating and will shelter it from radiation and prevent being blinded by its own infrared light. Matt Greenhouse concludes, “It will follow Earth around the Sun over the course of the year. So it’s in a Sun center orbit instead of an Earth center orbit,” “Just as Hubble rewrote all the textbooks, Webb will rewrite them again.”

FSA Connection Questions

1. In the article, the author uses quotes from which two NASA scientists?
2. In the piece, the word “spectrometer” means what?
3. The author seems to offer what main idea?
4. Select the best two sentences in the story that support the idea of the James Webb Space Telescope being superior to the Hubble Space Telescope.
5. What is the connotation of the word “infrared” in the story?