Tomodachi

With Earth Day just passing us by, NASA plans to look beyond the confines of our planet with plans to launch the world’s largest telescope! This new telescope, named the James Webb Space Telescope, will be 100 times more powerful than the current Hubble Space Telescope, which has already given us astounding images of galaxies and cosmic objects up to 12 billion light-years away. With the groundbreaking power of the new telescope, scientists at NASA hope to be able to see the first galaxies of the universe, and hope to study how the universe was created. On top of that, the James Webb telescope will have the power to study distant planets, allowing researchers to understand the composition of their atmospheres, surfaces, and more! To be able to accomplish these feats, the James Webb will incorporate a 21-foot long mirror, which will have 70 times the light-gathering capacity of the Hubble telescope. When launched, the James Webb telescope will be placed around 930,000 miles away from the earth, which will keep it from being overheated and blinded from the Sun’s infrared rays. With the telescope set to launch in October 2018, soon humanity will have a new means of viewing and researching the universe around us!