How the Webb Telescope Sees Back in Time

Unsung Science

CBS News

Society & Culture, Earth Sciences, Science

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On Christmas Day, 2021, NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit a million miles from Earth—a huge and insanely ambitious machine, billions of dollars over budget and 14 years past deadline. Now, as the telescope completes its first year of capturing astonishing images of the universe as it was just after the Big Bang, its creators discuss why so many things went right.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	On Christmas Day 2021, NASA launched the biggest, most powerful, most complex scientific instruments
0:11.0	ever fired into space.
0:13.2	The James Webb Space Telescope.
0:16.6	It's three times bigger than the Hubble Telescope, much too big to fit into a rocket, so NASA
0:22.1	designed it to fold up into the tube of an existing rocket like origami, and then unfold
0:29.2	it once it was an orbit, a million miles from Earth.
0:32.8	Well, it's now then one year since the Webb Telescope began sending pictures back.
0:38.2	I thought we should check in.
0:40.2	Oh my gosh, the Webb Telescope is doing better than it was supposed to, and better than
0:47.2	honestly I dared hope for.
0:49.2	We are doing science and returning data that is deeper, sharper, clearer than we promised
0:55.4	it would be.
0:56.4	I'm David Pogue, and this is Unsung Science.
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