JWST’s primary aim is to shed light on our cosmic origins: it will observe the Universe’s first galaxies, reveal the birth of stars and planets, and look for exoplanets with the potential for life.
ESA, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) have collaborated since 1996 on the definition of a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a general-purpose observatory with a large aperture telescope optimised for infrared observations and a suite of state-of-the-art astronomical instruments capable of addressing many outstanding issues in astronomy.
JWST’s investigations will cover questions such as: What did the early Universe look like? When did the first stars and galaxies emerge? How did the first galaxies evolve over time? What can we learn about dark matter and dark energy? How and where do stars form? What determines how many of them form and their individual masses? How do stars die and how does their death impact the surrounding medium? Where and how do planetary systems form and evolve?
The James Webb Space Telescope honours NASA’s second administrator, James E. Webb, who headed the agency from February 1961 to October 1968, at the time of the Apollo programme. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was formerly known as the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST).
Picture Credit : Google
