Photo: NASA
Later this month the James Webb Space Telescope will be shot into space, and when it reaches its destination – approximately 1.5 million kilometres from Earth – the massive telescope will slowly unfurl to its full size. All going to plan, it will allow us to see further into the Universe than anything else ever built, succeeding the Hubble telescope which has been orbiting the Earth since 1990.
Named after former Nasa administrator James Webb, it has taken 30 years and US$10 billion to develop, and is being described as one of the grand scientific endeavours of the 21st Century.
Dr Jane Rigby is an astrophysicist at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center. She serves as the Operations Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope.
