The James Webb Space Telescope is out of this world (rerun)

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hey everyone, we’re taking a short break today, but we’ll be back tomorrow with an all-new Make Me Smart. In the meantime, here’s a deep dive episode you may have missed, all about the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA released its first images earlier this month.

For the first deep dive of 2022, we’re going to space! OK, not really. But we’re talking about the most powerful space telescope ever. The James Webb Space Telescope cost $10 billion, a lot of tech went into developing it and we can’t stop obsessing over it. Neither can our guest.

“I cannot contain my excitement. It’s been a wild roller coaster getting to this point. And to have this telescope now launched in space, it’s just so thrilling for astronomers everywhere,” said Caitlin Casey, professor of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, who will be leading the biggest project on the JWST.

The telescope is expected to help researchers discover some of the most distant galaxies and study the atmosphere of planets outside our solar system to see if they’re habitable.

On the show today: what the JWST tells us about the future of public and private investment in space exploration.

Casey will also highlight the technological developments created by the JWST and its predecessor, Hubble, and how they’ve impacted industries from medical equipment to GPS technology.

In the News Fix, some companies have stopped predicting when they’ll be back in the office. Plus, an in-depth investigation into the House and Senate members who enslaved Black people. Later, we’ll discuss why some people want to tone down our use of the term “deep dive” and an answer to the Make Me Smart Question from the 2011 Nobel Prize winner in physics.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

“James Webb Space Telescope Launches on Journey to See the Dawn of Starlight” from The New York Times
Photo: the Hubble Deep Field
“Global Space Economy Rose to $447B in 2020, Continuing Five-Year Growth” from the Space Foundation
“NASA splits human spaceflight unit in two, reflecting new orbital economy” from Reuters
“Surging Covid-19 Puts an End to Projected Return-to-Office Dates” from The Wall Street Journal
“Rivian shares decline on 2021 production and executive departure” from CNBC
Who owned slaves in Congress? A list of 1,700 enslavers from The Washington Post

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, it's Kai. We are having to take a break today due to circumstances beyond
0:10.9	our control as they say. We are back tomorrow with an all-new episode to make me smart.
0:14.8	We'll have the YouTube livestream, economics on tap. I think it's going to be me and Andy
0:18.8	Euler actually. Anyway, in the meanwhile, we wanted to share this deep dive about the James
0:23.5	Webb Space Telescope from earlier this year. It's a super cool topic. It's a super cool
0:28.5	interview that Kimberly did about it. Check it out. And when you're done listening, if you'll
0:32.7	like, go check out some of those first images that NASA released from said telescope. They are
0:37.2	really, really cool. And that's it. We're back tomorrow. See you.
0:42.5	All right. So for this weekly deep dive, we are talking about something I am just obsessed
0:48.6	over the James Webb Space Telescope or hashtag JWST. It is the most powerful space telescope
0:58.2	ever. It cost about $10 billion. A ton of tech went into developing this thing. And it's really
1:04.8	worth getting smart about because the success of this telescope tells us a lot about NASA and the
1:11.8	European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency and everything that's going on with these
1:17.0	government agencies. Plus, some things about the way that public versus private funding of space
1:25.3	exploration is going right now. So here to make a smart on this topic is Caitlin Casey, a professor
1:32.0	of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin who is approved to use the telescope and will be
1:38.7	leading the largest project on the JWST. Welcome to the program. Thanks so much for having me.
1:46.4	Okay. How excited have you been the last couple of weeks? Oh my gosh. I cannot contain my excitement.
1:54.1	It's been a wild roller coaster getting to this point and to have this telescope now launched in
2:00.6	space, it's just so thrilling. So thrilling for astronomers everywhere, but I hope more broadly
2:08.4	the public too. I mean, everyone's excited about this telescope. So we can't wait to see its first
2:13.2	images. Which are coming this summer, right? Yeah. Yeah. So they're in the process of turning on each
	...

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