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America was a divided nation, but that didn’t stop it from building parts of the world. James Webb Space Telescope in a red state and testing them in a blue state.
European Union and Russia, face to face over ukraine and other topics this year, but scientists from both sides will benefit greatly from the discoveries that are soon to come.
and duration epidemic battered supply chains around the world, no crash has derailed the telescope’s orbit of the stars: Parts were assembled in multiple countries, then tested in the United States, and the final product ended up on a launch pad in French Guiana before being launched into space. Christmas day.
In some ways, the James Webb Space Telescope told a story rarely heard these days: the tale of nations coming together for a common ambition. At a time when countries are divided climate change, migration and one the disease that killed millionsThe spacecraft launched to search for habitable planets and search for the oldest, most distant stars and galaxies was a powerful reminder that international collaboration on large-scale projects is still possible.
“I like to think of science as a way to alleviate some of the extreme situations we have on this planet,” said Martin Barstow, professor of astrophysics and space science at the University of Leicester in England, who oversees the telescope’s mission control. centre. “And I’ve always seen space as a space where we collaborated through all difficult times.”
But with cooperation came competition. China, which does not participate in the project, plans to launch own space telescope expected to be some kind of competitor. happened in china team up with Russia in their missions Russia-US space alliance It became tense due to the political tensions between the countries.
Still, the design and launch of the telescope, which took more than 30 years, required not only the collaboration of scientists around the world, but also the sharing of the $10 billion cost, largely borne by the United States. The James Webb Space Telescope, mostly an American affair launched last year and overseen by NASA, was a joint venture of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency — The largest and most expensive space-based observatory ever built.
Although the turmoil on both sides of the Atlantic changed the political landscape, neither affected the telescope project. The study surpassed Donald J. Trump’s rise in the United States, Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, and the growing popularity of nationalist movements in Europe, including many of their supporters questioning vaccine science.
When the pandemic brought worldwide travel bans, German scientists had to figure out how to remotely test parts of the telescope located on Redondo Beach, California.
“I used to come to Los Angeles often, and then suddenly you just couldn’t do it,” said Oliver Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, who is working on the successor to the Webb telescope already underway in California. He said teams spent weeks trying to find workarounds.
Mr. Krause’s own contributions were key pieces of the engineering puzzle – the telescope’s mid-infrared camera and the wheels that allow the spectrograph to switch between various modes. His team in Heidelberg, Germany was chosen to build them because of their long expertise in the moving parts of telescopes.
“It’s important because if the wheel gets stuck in an intermediate position, you won’t suddenly have light coming in,” he said, praising German engineering. Other parts of the telescope, like the sun shield, were built in places like Huntsville, Ala.
As parts of the telescope navigate borders and political divides, so do experts like Sarah Kendrew, an astronomer and instrument and calibration scientist at the European Space Agency.
Ms. Kendrew helped create the Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, which is one of the telescope’s key components. The device can detect light from the mid-infrared region of the invisible electromagnetic spectrum and can reveal faint galaxies, stars in formation, and planets orbiting other stars known as exoplanets.
Ms. Kendrew’s work on MIRI began in 2008 during a postdoctoral fellowship in the Netherlands. He then moved to Germany, where the device was tested, and to England, continuing to work on MIRI and other astronomical instruments. Finally, in 2016, it was moved to Baltimore, which became the telescope’s mission control center.
“Science is one of those areas where you have to learn to work across borders and beyond political divisions,” said Kourou, a French region in South America, when he watched the telescope take off shortly after returning home from French Guiana.
Coming at the end of an extremely difficult year in a world desperate for good news, the launch itself seemed to have something hopeful. The film, which has been watched in many countries, harks back to the opening of the International Space Station two decades ago, or the first Apollo missions people watched to watch the space race around the world.
“People all over the world watched the launch of James Webb,” said Michaël Gillon, a Belgian astrophysicist involved in the project. “Even if they’re in China or North Korea, it’s an interesting thing for them. And the possibility of discovery concerns people, regardless of their religion or political system.”
As scientists look through the telescope to answer countless questions about the universe, what’s most exciting is something humanity has long wondered: Will there be others gazing at us from the stars?
Looking for signs of life on other planets, Mr. Gillon assembles the team that may one day return with an answer.
Using earlier telescopes, Mr. Gillon discovered seven Earth-sized planets in the Trappist-1 star system in the constellation Aquarius. He named each of them after one of his favorite beers.
“We wanted to give the project a Belgian feel,” he joked.
To study Trappist-1 fully, it organized a consortium of more than 100 scientists, including those from Morocco, Japan and the Netherlands, and pooled their resources to jointly research the star system.
“We can even detect some traces of biological activity that are truly the holy grail of this area,” said Mr Gillon.
The astronomer considered the potential impact of finding life in the universe at a time when climate change and disease seemed to threaten our shared future.
“It won’t solve all our problems,” he agreed. “I still think it’s something that will bring magic and a sense of being human.”
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