James Webb’s predecessor, Hubble, has long been the most powerful space telescope ever built. And it has enabled spectacular advances in the understanding of the universe.
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Before James Webb, there was Hubble: lThe most powerful James Webb space telescope ever built, to be launched on Saturday 25 December by Ariane 5. It will take over from the most famous telescope to date, Hubble. In 31 years of service, he sent us nearly 1.5 million never-before-seen photos with incredible colors (these are retouched colors but they each correspond to a physical reality). Thanks to Hubble, scientists were able to observe exoplanets located outside our solar system, black holes, nebulae and a galaxy 13 billion years old.
“Hubble is a bit like the Cartier-Bresson of the sky ”Says Alain Cirou, editorial director of Sky and Space, referring to the precision of the shots of the famous photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who knew how to capture the perfect moment. This telescope, which is the size of a truck and which sits in orbit at an altitude of 545 km from the Earth, has revealed the vastness of the cosmos to us. He was able to show by the image that there were 300 billion galaxies in the universe each composed of a few hundred billion stars. Hubble, was simply qualified by NASA “most significant advance in astronomy since the invention of the Galileo telescope”.
James Webb will have distant vision 100 times more precise. “He could observe a bumblebee on the moon” explains one of the head of the mission. James webb “will see” in infrared waves. He will therefore be able to look through clouds of dust that were impenetrable to Hubble. And as in space, “To see further is to see older”, he may be able to observe the birth of the first galaxies. See you in six months, for the first pictures if all goes well. Because let us remember that James Webb, will fly folded like an origami aboard the Ariane rocket. It will take 200 successive technical operations to unfold it and make it operational.
And what will become of Hubble? It’s not going to go away right away because it’s still working. And when we can no longer repair it, its orbit will be changed so that it disintegrates in the atmosphere. Hubble has already lived twice as long as expected … and it could very well hold out for a few more years.