Written by: Subham Chapagain - 23069, Grade XII
Posted on: 17 January, 2023
In 1609, Galileo pointed one of the first telescopes ever built at the heavens, and what he observed sparked a revolution of curiosity that has been at the center of every human generation since. The mysteries of the universe were limitless, and the journey to discover them had only just begun. More than 400 years later, our obsession with the mystery that is the universe has only intensified, fueling many great technological advances that make our ever-expanding universe seem smaller and its borders closer than ever. On December 25, 2021, NASA launched humanity's most powerful telescope to date. The James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST for short, was designed to peer more than 13.5 billion years into the past to study the most distant and oldest regions of the universe and to provide a glimpse back into the early days of the universe. Hubble has brought us images of galaxies we didn't know existed, star clusters, and nebulae we've never seen before.These images helped illustrate how, in the early days of our universe, just millions of years after the Big Bang, swirling, merging galaxies teeming with stars developed from cool clouds of gas and dust. The Hubble telescope is only able to see light in the visible spectrum, which means it has a limited amount of information it can get about these oldest galaxies. But with Webb, we finally have a chance to observe them. After a successful launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on Dec. 25 and the completion of two mid-course correction maneuvers, the Webb team has analyzed its initial trajectory and determined the observatory should have enough propellant to allow support of science operations in orbit for significantly longer than a 10-year science lifetime. When Galileo raised his telescope to the sky and looked at the craters on the moon, he was acting on an almost instinctive human curiosity that has accompanied us since the dawn of time. More than 400 years later, the same curiosity brings us even closer to our cosmic background. Earth is only a small stage in the cosmic arena, and with the dawn of a new era of space exploration, we know this more than ever. There is no doubt that in the coming years, Webb will bring the universe even closer to us and help us learn more about the reality of our cosmic existence.
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