James Webb telescope to be sent into space aboard Ariane 5

On board this Ariane 5, for a launch scheduled for Saturday, December 25, is a 12-meter high telescope. It is the largest, most sophisticated ever to be sent into space. The James Webb telescope is the result of 30 years of work. Canadians, Europeans, Americans… more than 10,000 engineers from all over the world worked on this pharaonic project. Like this director of NASA, who came especially to Guyana to see the final preparations before takeoff.

“It was built on Earth, but it will tell us everything that we do not yet know about the universe, and that we do not have the means to study”, explains Mark Voyton, NASA director of the James Webb program. The telescope’s orbit will be 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, four times farther than the Moon, at the Lagrange 2 point. Thanks to its infrared technology, it will be able to track the first galaxies, black holes or signs of life. around exoplanets. James-Webb will succeed the Hubble Telescope.