You should be “terrified” by the upcoming James Webb telescope launch

Scientists spent years and years sorting out all the details of the launch of the Successor of the Hubble Space Telescopes, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The telescope has been under construction for many years now and has been cursed with many delays for various reasons. Billions and billions of dollars have been poured into the telescope which is about to reveal the secrets of the universe to us, and now engineers, scientists and NASA are nearing the end of the development track and are almost ready for launch.

All the years of work, money, and time to develop JWST could all end in seconds if the Ariane 5 rocket launch fails. Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for Science Missions at NASA, summed up all the risks JWST will endure from the time it is about to launch until it is successfully deployed and operational. Zurbuchen wrote: “Those who are not worried or even terrified about it do not understand what we are trying to do.“

Add, “We have worked hard to put together the team for this task and it has been a difficult journey at times. This mission has a very troubled history with disappointing, even confusing chapters. We’re where we are because Webb has some of the best engineers and leaders I’ve ever met, and they kept going while others were willing to give up.“

SEE THE GALLERY – 2 IMAGES

NASA Chief Scientist Thomas Zurbuchen

ArsTechnica explained that the JWST will travel 1.5 million km (932,056 miles) from Earth to a place in space called L2 Lagrange Point. During its voyage and once arrived at point L2 of Lagrange, the JWST will deploy parts of the large folded telescope. This deployment process will take approximately three weeks and has 350 single points of complete failure with no hope of repair.

JWST is expected to launch later this year.

For more information on this story, check out this link here.

More news on the James Webb Space Telescope

Read more: Hubble’s successor James Webb Space Telescope locks launch date

Read more: Hubble’s successor to uncover great secrets about our early universe