The James Webb Space Telescope is a large infrared observatory developed by NASA with the European and Canadian space agencies. It was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou in French Guiana and, after a month-long journey, entered orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. Its 6.5-metre gold-coated segmented mirror and a tennis-court-sized sunshield let it observe faint, distant, redshifted light from the earliest galaxies, star-forming regions and exoplanet atmospheres. It succeeded Hubble as the premier space observatory, and its first images were released in 2022. It is named after James E. Webb, who led NASA in the 1960s.
Before and after
- from 6 November 2021 to 23 November 2024Premiere of Arcane
- 13 November 2021Glasgow Climate Pact
- 24 November 2021Release of Encanto
- 24 November 2021Launch of Double Asteroid Redirection Test
- 25 December 2021Launch of James Webb Space Telescope
- from 2022 to 2023Battle of Marinka
- 2022Russian strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure
- 2022Known exoplanets pass 5,000
- from 2 January 2022 to 11 January 20222022 Kazakh unrest
More in Universe & space
- 4 October 1957Launch of Sputnik 1
- 22 October 1969Discovery of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
- 14 September 1974Discovery of Leda
- 28 July 1989Discovery of Galatea
- 15 May 2005Discovery of Hydra
- 19 January 2006Launch of New Horizons
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 21st century.