OT: James Webb Space Telescope set to launch 12/22
The successor to the Hubble Telescope, The James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled to launch into orbit on Wednesday, 12/22 @ 7:20am ET from French Guiana.
The Webb telescope will take about a month to reach it's orbit located about 1 million miles away from Earth orbiting the Sun with the Earth between it and the Sun.
When it reaches orbit, the telescope will undergo testing & trials to ready it for operation. While some initial images may result, the first pictures are expected in the summer of 2022.
The key differences between Hubble and Webb are: The Webb telescope mirrors are much larger than Hubble's camera giving it a field of range collecting area over 6x as large. Also, the Webb telescope will collect light primarily in the infrared spectrum which maximizes the viewable amount of stars and galaxies.
Further, the Webb has the latest in instruments that will aid in the search for planets orbiting stars and will be able to analyze the chemical makeup of planetary atmospheres (does it have water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, etc).
The Webb telescope will show things in the universe we have never seen and did not know existed. It'll be used to explore not only our local solar system but the vastness of space and will look farther back in time to about 100-200 million years after the big bang to see infant galaxies.
If you love astronomy expect Summer 2022 to be mind blowing.
https://www.youtube.com/nasawebbtelescope
December 14th, 2021 at 2:34 PM ^
60 minutes had a segment Sunday on the Webb Telescope… way cool, can’t wait to see ET waving back at us.
December 14th, 2021 at 3:32 PM ^
Yes, "waving."
December 14th, 2021 at 3:41 PM ^
Woof… time has not been kind to ET
December 14th, 2021 at 3:49 PM ^
ET is a Wisconsin alum? Wow, I'd think a superior extraterrestrial intelligence could've scored a degree from a better school....
December 14th, 2021 at 4:28 PM ^
Lol, I knew that was coming back!
December 14th, 2021 at 2:36 PM ^
I am a layperson who loves and is fascinated by astronomy. We need to invest more into these types of endeavors towards ensuring the long-term future of humanity.
On the other hand, I would be pretty pleased if humanity decided to NOT send radio (or other) signals or messages into space for a long, long time. METI is quite possibly the single most dangerous activity going on in the world today that no one talks about.
December 14th, 2021 at 2:42 PM ^
It’s like walking through a primitive jungle at night singing songs while drunk all by yourself.
December 14th, 2021 at 2:45 PM ^
The METI messages will take centuries to reach anyone, so you/we don't really need to worry about galactic bad actors.
December 14th, 2021 at 2:49 PM ^
Oooh, there is a really great nihilism and fatalism about your position here. While most folks are staying awake at night worried about our grandkids - whether it be over the national debt or global warming - you are in the small "FUCK OUR GRAT-GREAT-GRANDKIDS" camp, eh?
I find your position fascinating and would like to subscribe to your Internet Web Log and/or your newsletter. :-D
December 14th, 2021 at 3:11 PM ^
My URL is printed inside your aluminum foil hat - it's written in invisible ink so you'll have to work at finding it.
December 14th, 2021 at 4:27 PM ^
I think you took my feeble attempt at humor the wrong way. No offense intended.
Anyhow, you are right. It will take hundreds (or thousands, or more) years for most of the messages we've sent to reach their destinations. (Though I do know one we sent in either the 70s or 80s could reach its target over the next few decades, and if its recipients can travel - or reply with a deadly projectile back, for instance - at the speed of light, we could get their response this century). But I am not sure if it matters if they receive it in 100, 1000, or 10,000 years. We may not be ready (technologically) for the reply.
December 14th, 2021 at 7:38 PM ^
Oh yea, nothing to worry about...
December 14th, 2021 at 2:45 PM ^
I have a "we are alone" view about intelligent life in the universe for lots of reasons although who knows?
Anyway, assuming the idea that more advanced life exists in the universe and has technology to cover vast distances, you're right that it probably isn't a good idea to broadcast our presence. Water / oxygen planets, from the small sampling we have, appear to be extremely rare. And assuming life in other parts of the universe requires the same elements (O2, water, CO2, etc) and not silicone or something else then we could be putting a target on our ourselves.
Our own history shows us that primitive people meeting advanced cultures always ends badly for the primitive people.
December 14th, 2021 at 2:53 PM ^
Yup. I think there is almost certainly life out there somewhere, given the number of exoplanets (about 5,500?) we have found in just our tiny corner of our own little galaxy in the last 20 years. Yet it may be so far away we never come into contact. Or, we may have developed earlier than others. Or, most likely, they may be a lot like us, came along earlier than us, and already killed themselves off long ago. :-(
Nevertheless, why run the risk? We should shut up until we can keep our own damned planet from eating itself alive, and then maybe say "hi"...
December 14th, 2021 at 3:23 PM ^
There’s a really interesting podcast episode out there that sums up the pro/con argument for reaching out (NYTs The Argument: should we say hi to aliens?). I’m fairly strongly in the we-need-to-shut-up camp. The odds of encountering extraterrestrial life is probably pretty small. The odds that that life is also benevolent and wants to be buddies? I sure wouldn’t bet the fate of humanity on that outcome.
December 14th, 2021 at 2:55 PM ^
My view is that somewhere there is other intelligent life. But how old is that life? It's taken us ~4.5 Billion years to get to where we are, so I suspect it would take others that long, as well. Maybe longer maybe shorter, but still billions of years to evolve, learn, and discover the wonders of science. I don't think there's life that is so far in front of us that they could travel here anymore than we can travel there.
December 14th, 2021 at 3:06 PM ^
I believe in the Great Filter, and that filter is called social media.
December 14th, 2021 at 4:31 PM ^
I have assumed the Great Filter had to be AI, and that it answers Fermi's Paradox. But now I think it's Twitter... :-)
December 14th, 2021 at 5:47 PM ^
I thought it was Twitter until I found out about TikTok
December 14th, 2021 at 3:40 PM ^
The difference is how quickly technology can accelerate as time goes on. It took humanity nearly 300000 years to go from the earliest humans to a functioning automobile. From there, it took 84 years to put a person on the moon. All it really takes is one planet being a few thousand years or so ahead on the timeline to be so far beyond our comprehension of possible technologies.
December 14th, 2021 at 7:51 PM ^
Using a human frame of reference to make guesses about what extra terrestrial life would do.....problematic. Wrong tools. The problem is impossible to avoid....for us, outside the box thinking can't include not thinking like a human being. So anything we say is just a wild ass guess, and says more about us than anything else. Could be right, but for reasons we have no ability to relate to.
December 14th, 2021 at 4:08 PM ^
I am highly skeptical of the existence of perceivable and intelligent extraterrestrial life for various reasons both mathematical and religious.
That said, were I to be wrong, the likeliest explanation for the Fermi Paradox would probably be the Dark Forest concept of the intelligent universe.
So I think that METI signals are probably useless, and in the small window of possibility that they might reach someone, reaching someone is probably a bad idea.
This is one of several policies that are undertaken that receives no public debate that should. People are very concerned with human involvement in pandemics (both in their theories of its origin and their desire for managing with policy) and with human involvement in the climate. It seems like certain capabilities, like alerting extraterrestrials to the existence of intelligence life on earth and developing the capability to alter the orbits of asteroids, are the sorts of things that should be matters of public discussion and voting.
December 14th, 2021 at 4:51 PM ^
I don't know if there are reasons within the religious sphere of not believing in intelligent life out in the Universe. We ARE talking about the creator of 'Everything'; why would the creator create only us 'in his image'? The Universe is ginormous; I think it is very small minded - and self centered - for us to think we would be his only intelligent living creation. Who are we that the creator should share his mind with us?
December 14th, 2021 at 4:57 PM ^
Religion is almost exclusively small-minded and self-centered by nature. It is entirely unsurprising that human-centric dominionist thinking pervades religious minds.
December 14th, 2021 at 5:19 PM ^
I can understand why you would say this...loads of terrible things have been done in the name of religion/God.
But I think it's a pretty narrow view of history to chalk 'religious' people up as being 'almost exclusively small-minded and self-natured'. There are thousands of examples of 'religious' people sacrificing their own comforts (and lives) in order to bring much needed medicine, education, etc to others who needed it.
I know you were saying this in the context of religious people's views on whether or not life exists on other planets...
December 14th, 2021 at 4:22 PM ^
Have you read The Dark Forest? (or the Three Body Trilogy). I immediately thought about those books when I saw your message about METI. This is a very interesting topic since it's quite likely that if another technological civilization exists, they are orders of magnitude more advanced than we are
December 14th, 2021 at 5:08 PM ^
It seems like any civilization with the capability to travel here or launch some type of attack to wipe us out would already know we are here. We only detected the first planet outside our solar system 20 years ago. Since then, we have detected thousands. We are making rapid progress to be able to determine the atmospheric makeup and potential for life on those planets. Add 1,000 years to our current telescope capabilities and what will we be able to do?
A civilization far more advanced than ours by thousands of years (which is a blink of an eye on cosmic time scales) that also has in interest in either destroying or controlling other intelligent life would surely have completed a survey of the planets within their range. There are about 7 to 8 million stars within 1,000 light years of earth. While that is a lot it would not be an impossible task given even technology not much beyond our own to identify all planets supporting life in that range within a reasonable time frame of 10 to 50 years.
December 14th, 2021 at 2:42 PM ^
I honestly thought this would never happen. Wasn't the original launch date supposed to be in 2015 or something?
Now the next one I've been waiting for, when are we going to get images of Sagittarius A*?
December 14th, 2021 at 3:45 PM ^
It's going to be 1 million miles closer to Uranus, so those crystal clear pictures will soon be on Space.Pornhub.com
December 14th, 2021 at 2:44 PM ^
What makes this one interesting is it has maybe a 80% chance of working, but if it fails, $10 billion down the drain and countless academic careers. Half the field is throwing up in their mouth over this launch.
December 14th, 2021 at 2:47 PM ^
First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price? -S.R. Hadden
December 14th, 2021 at 2:59 PM ^
If it makes it, it will be interesting to see how long it can maintain its orbit. 5-10 years is what they are expecting from the fuel it has.
December 14th, 2021 at 3:06 PM ^
The engineers sandbag with safety factors built in due to "we don't know what we don't know" thinking. If this gizmo actually unfolds and becomes operational I wouldn't be surprised if we see 15-20 years out of it.
December 14th, 2021 at 5:13 PM ^
I was under the impression that it's orbiting at a LeGrange point so fuel wouldn't be much of an issue?
December 14th, 2021 at 3:01 PM ^
$10 billion over the course of time that it took to get this launched is absolute chump change, just so you have some perspective. We spent 600 times that on fruitless wars in the middle east since 2001.
$10 billion on having a decent chance of expanding our knowledge of the universe is a hell of a deal.
December 14th, 2021 at 2:46 PM ^
Spaces bitches space
December 14th, 2021 at 3:49 PM ^
Nope - can't use this as James Webb was a UNC grad (Bachelor of Arts in Education).
Real astronauts from Michigan are the true space bitches.
December 14th, 2021 at 2:53 PM ^
Came for the astronomy, found a pile of paranoid delusions and cynical bullshit in the comments. Wish I was surprised.
December 14th, 2021 at 3:02 PM ^
The Ariane rocket is pretty stable and reliable, just need to hope the fairing pressure issues are sorted out. Two successful flights seem to point to it being okay. Also need to hope that the 'anomaly' that delayed the launch yet another week was sorted out successfully (a shipping clamp was released too suddenly and they were worried about damage).
After a good launch and orbital insertion, just need the ~hundreds of individual deployment events to go off without a hitch. Easy peasy...
Can't wait for this thing to send back images from cosmic moments after the Big Bang...
December 14th, 2021 at 3:09 PM ^
Being a part of the team building something like this, is the dream job for Systems Engineers like me. I can’t wait to see what they find.
December 15th, 2021 at 2:17 PM ^
We could always use more Systems Engineers here at Northrop Grumman. Let me know if you're interested in talking further.
December 14th, 2021 at 3:12 PM ^
While this stuff is amazing and often times beyond what my human brain can comprehend, it is always perplexing to me how we continue to explore more and more of space, yet the oceans of our very plant remains roughly 80% unexplored and unobserved.
December 14th, 2021 at 3:13 PM ^
True, but probably equally as hard to reach in some respects.
December 14th, 2021 at 3:54 PM ^
speaking as a former ocean scientist, its because 80% of the oceans are fucking boring as shit and no one wants to spend taxpayer money so you can cruise around the abyssal plain in a submarine looking at benthic critters eating mud and whale bones*.
* to be fair, that time lapse video of a whale carcass that the BBC made was cool and people liked it, so maybe you could get that funded.
December 15th, 2021 at 11:36 AM ^
That's because we have a deal with the aliens living down there to leave their shit alone.
December 14th, 2021 at 3:13 PM ^
I remember when the Hubble went up; hard to believe it was that long ago.
I can’t wait to see the difference more than 3 decades of better tech makes.
December 14th, 2021 at 3:14 PM ^
Keeping fingers crossed for a good launch.
December 14th, 2021 at 3:58 PM ^
oumuamua
Highly recommend Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb he has an interesting theory about that strange object and offers a lot of evidence for how it isn’t naturally occurring and is therefore artificial technology that visited our solar system.
Also it’s highly possible we’ve been visited already by extraterrestrials given the number of UAP sightings. The highly interesting thing is they seem to be centered on nuclear capabilities and military installations which if this was technology we could take out because it was violating our airspace we would have. Therefore if they haven’t attacked yet, assuming this is extraterritorial activity at the very least it seems likely they are neutral towards us. Anyway who knows.
Beat Georgia.
December 14th, 2021 at 4:04 PM ^
Yes, paranoid delusions, cynical bullshit, and now batshit conspiracy theories. This is exactly what every thread on space exploration needs.
December 14th, 2021 at 4:26 PM ^
Serious question because I found the thread pretty interesting, but where did you see paranoid delusions or cynicism in the thread? All I see is folks somewhat thoughtfully discussing philosophical questions about the universe. Were you expecting an in-depth discussion on the specific manufacturing techniques of the batteries used on the telescope? Or whether the foil shield should be 7 or 8 nanometers thick?