In about six months' time, after arriving at its new home and being set up, Webb will be ready to start looking into the farthest reaches of the universe. The new telescope will travel 1.6 million kilometres from our planet into a Lagrange point, where the Earth and the Sun's gravity, along with its orbital momentum, will help keep it in one place without using up much fuel. Webb will also go much further from Earth than Hubble. ![]() To account for this, a sunshield the size of a tennis court will also unfold to block out the Sun's rays and keep the telescope cool while a solar panel behind it will generate electricity. The collapsible design, however, means the mirror is left open to space where sunlight would obscure its observations if left unchecked. These will fold so that it can be launched in a conventional rocket and can adjust itself as instructed in space. With Webb, they will have a mirror around 6.5 metres in diameter, made of 18 individual segments. While Hubble's mirror, at 2.4 metres, is big, scientists wanted to create an even larger telescope. The larger the mirror, the more likely that even the faintest traces of distant galaxies and other space objects will be detected. One particular limitation of Hubble was that it was designed to fit inside the head of a rocket, restricting its size.Ī larger mirror allows greater amounts of light to be gathered and focused in the telescope. After issues with its lens were corrected, the telescope gave scientists some of the most spectacular images of the cosmos.Įven before Hubble was launched, scientists were discussing what would come next for space observation. ![]() Perhaps the most famous space telescope is Hubble, which launched in 1990. The first were launched in the late 1960s and early 1970s, aiming to capture images of the universe without Earth's atmosphere in the way. Space telescopes are satellites pointed into space and designed to collect types of radiation including light, X-rays and infrared.
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