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| James Webb Space Telescope launch rocket will lift-off from the equatorial Kourou spaceport. (Photo by= NASA) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] The biggest space telescope ever conceived is scheduled to go into orbit in the coming hours. The $10bn James Webb Space Telescope will be launched on a European Ariane rocket from French Guiana, BBC reported.
It's a project that has taken 30 years to design and build and is regarded as one of the grand scientific endeavours of the 21st Century. Webb's goal will be to try to image the very first stars and galaxies to shine in the Universe. It will also have the power to probe the atmospheres of distant planets to look for gases that might hint at the presence of life. Lift-off from the equatorial Kourou spaceport is timed for 09:20 local time (12:20 GMT). The anticipation is high, but so too is the level of anxiety.
To get to space, Webb must first survive a 27-minute ascent on what is, in effect, a controlled explosion. The telescope then has to unfold itself in a series of complex deployments, all of which must be completed flawlessly or the observatory as a whole won't work. The James Webb telescope is named after one of the architects of the Apollo Moon programme, and the space agencies of the US, Europe and Canada, who are all partners on the project, regard it as a science flagship of no less importance.
