Webb's instruments are designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range. Webb will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System. Webb will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way Galaxy. After launch, the observatory was successfully unfolded and is being readied for science. The observatory launched into space on an Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana on December 25, 2021. At the same time, though, Kreidberg is hopeful that soon other space telescopes will be built that are designed from the start to search Earth-like planets for signs of life.The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes called JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope. She's still super excited for James Webb's launch later this year, because of what this telescope should reveal about planets outside our solar system, both large and small. The telescope should definitely be able to see what gas dominates an atmosphere, says Kreidberg, 'but when you start talking about combinations of different gases, particularly those that have very low abundance or not very strong spectral features, it's a really big challenge.' That's why some astronomers think it's a stretch to believe that James Webb will be able to find hints of alien life, if they're out there. Trying to tease out subtle combinations of gases that might mean life on other planets is an extremely difficult thing to do-especially for a telescope that was not conceived with this task in mind. 'We're going to have to be, sort of, very careful with that.' 'As careful as we are as scientists in trying to present our findings, when people hear things like 'habitable zone plus water,' they immediately assume that we've found aliens,' says Lewis. 'And then we're going to go from there-okay, what is that air made of? And is the air the same for planets that are close to the star or planets that are far from the star?' James Webb should be able to reveal whether or not any of these planets are actually surrounded by air, says Lewis. 'It's the perfect target for the James Webb Space Telescope,' says Lewis. A small, cool star, called TRAPPIST-1, is orbited by seven Earth-sized planets, and three of them orbit in the zone where temperatures should be mild enough to have water in liquid form. One intriguing planetary system that James Webb will study is about 40 light years away.

'It's within scope for the James Webb Space Telescope to find hints of life on rocky planets.' 'The James Webb Space Telescope does have the capability to measure those key biosignatures,' says Nikole Lewis, another astronomer at Cornell University who focuses on planets beyond our solar system. That's important because if any of those planets has life as we know it, scientists would expect to see certain tell-tale combinations of different gases that they call 'biosignatures,' such as oxygen plus methane. It's within scope for the James Webb Space Telescope to find hints of life on rocky planets.Īstronomer Nikole Lewis of Cornell University 'Now, 25 years after the first planet was discovered around another star, we know that pretty much every star, on average, has at least one planet,' says Kreidberg.

Since then, scientists have detected thousands of planets. She notes that the first such planet around a Sun-like star was found in 1995.

'I think the earliest discussions about James Webb were happening in the 1990s, when I was in elementary school,' says Laura Kreidberg, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany who studies planets beyond our solar system. The new generation of astronomers who work in this field are eager to take advantage of this telescope's power. That's the study of so-called exoplanets - planets beyond our solar system. Way back then, no one had discovered any of the planets circling distant stars, and what scientists mainly wanted was a telescope that could capture light from the first galaxies in the universe.īuilding this $10 billion instrument proved so complex and time-consuming, however, that in the meantime, a whole new scientific field has sprung up. Searching for signs of life wasn't part of the original job description over three decades ago, when the James Webb Space Telescope, named after a former NASA administrator, was first conceived. Science NASA Is Launching A New Telescope That Could Offer Some Cosmic Eye Candy Cosmic ambitions for new telescope

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