By Nneka Nwogwugwu
The largest, most powerful space observatory, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to be built is now days away from its long-awaited launch.
After nearly two decades of development, and around seven launch delays, the space observatory is now fully fuelled and sitting in the final assembly building in Kourou, French Guiana, ahead of blastoff scheduled for no earlier than December 24.
First conceived 30 years ago, JWST is the largest space observatory ever to be built, and is often described as one of NASA’s biggest and boldest challenges.
Involving a large international collaboration with the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency – with both agencies providing key scientific instruments, and the ESA contributing a launch vehicle called Ariane 5 – the JWST promises to revolutionise our understanding of the universe by probing deeper and farther than ever done before.
This is one of the key reasons that JWST is considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which has provided stunning, iconic images of our 13.8 billion-year-old universe for over 25 years.
However, while Hubble’s eyes mainly see in the ultraviolet to visible light part of the electromagnetic spectrum, JWST will observe in the near and mid-infrared wavelengths, which are not visible to human eyes.