JWST or Why I will panic for 30–60 days

This morning I saw the most accurate headline of the year. On slate, editor’s wrote “Astronomers are freaking out over the launch of the James Webb telescope.”

JWST, folded up and ready to mount its rocket

NASA seems pretty darn certain that the JWST is going up on Christmas at O-dark-20 for most of us here in the Americas (12:20 UTC, 7:20 Eastern, 4:20 Pacific).

This telescope is named after a NASA administrator who is controversial and may have been part of the Lavender Scare at NASA. For this reason I will always refer to this scope as JWST.

This is a huge telescope. The idea of iterative design was thrown out the window as NASA jumped from telescopes that could launch in their final form to a system that origamis into its rocket fairing. Made of 18 hexagonal mirrors, the infrared telescope has a 6.5 m diameter, and is kept cool with a series of baffles that block sunlight and air gap — or rather vacuum gap — the scope from any heat. It is the hope of the astronomy community that this massive system will be able to collect enough light to reveal the first galaxies and stars forming in the universe and resolve worlds orbiting nearby stars. This is not a replacement for Hubble; JWST is something new, working in wavelengths more like Spitzer or Herschel.

This is the single most expensive system for science we have ever attempted to put in orbit…