NASA is set to release the first pictures taken by the highly sophisticated James Webb Space Telescope next month, agency officials announced on Wednesday.
In a highly anticipated ceremony on July 12, NASA and its collaborators, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, will present the first collection of full-color photos from the Webb telescope.
The $10 billion observatory is the biggest and most powerful space telescope ever built, and scientists have predicted that it will drastically alter how we understand the universe, per a report from NBC News.
NASA will begin a live stream of the presentation of the images at 10:30 A.M. EDT. Space agency officials said they will publish the Webb telescope's first spectrum of an exoplanet, which displays light emitted at various wavelengths from a planet in another star system, in addition to the deepest infrared image of the universe ever acquired. The atmospheres and chemical composition of other exoplanets in the universe may be better understood in light of these images.
The first wave of James Webb Space Telescope Images will also demonstrate how galaxies interact and develop, as well as pictures of the life cycle of stars, from their birth to their catastrophic demise.
NASA Officials Tease First James Webb Space Telescope Images
Thomas Zurbuchen, an associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, described his experience of seeing the first images of the James Webb Telescope as an unveiling of "secrets that have been there for many, many decades, centuries, millennia."
"It's not an image. It's a new worldview," Zurbuchen said in a media briefing streamed on YouTube.
NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy was astonished by the photos taken by the space observatory, Ars Technica reported.
Melroy stated: "What I have seen moved me, as a scientist, as an engineer, and as a human being."
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Despite suffering from five micrometeoroid impacts, the James Webb Telescope is still in good shape due to a precise launch by the European Space Agency's Ariane 5 rocket that provides enough maneuvering propellant on board, loaded with fuel that can last 20 years.
According to NASA administrator Bill Nelson, the first batch of images will show "farther than humanity has ever looked before," adding that humanity "is only beginning to understand what Webb can and will do."
Latest Space Observatory Is Expected To Surpass Hubble Space Telescope's Capabilities
On December 25, 2021, the Webb telescope, the size of a tennis court, was sent into space from Kourou, French Guiana, and entered orbit in January 2022.
James Webb Telescope images could surpass the Hubble Space Telescope's deep imaging fields, which indicate galaxies in our universe began as soon as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, which occurred approximately 13.7 billion years ago, per Space News.
It took NASA six months to configure the James Webb Telescope in orbit and test its several scientific instruments.
According to a CNN report, Webb project manager Bill Ochs and his team are taking the final steps in preparing the observatory to collect scientific data, which will conclude next week.
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