TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

To Infinity And Beyond

It is dubbed as the single most complicated project that has perhaps been attempted till date and it took over 25 years and $10B in the making! Yes, we are talking about James Webb Space Telescope (JWST ).
This year, every woman and man on this planet received a Christmas gift. And probably the greatest gift in the history of mankind. The gift came from NASA (along with European and Canadian Space Agencies). While the world was celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ on Dec 25, 2021, NASA launched an Ariane 5 rocket to carry JWST so that we may see the birth of the Universe- the Big Bang and the aftermath for millions of years.
The human-made engineering, technological and scientific marvel launched into space -JWST is the most powerful modern space telescope created and it is just beginning its month-long journey to give us the most intricate images of our universe, galaxy and solar system.

Over 25 years in the making through a joint effort lead by NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration along with contributions from the European Space Agency – ESA and the Canadian Space Agency | Agence spatiale canadienne, this new telescope is designed to see farther in space and, therefore, further back in time than any other telescope including the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST primary light gathering mirror is 21 feet across, about three times bigger than Hubble, and seven times more sensitive.

This telescope will peer to see the longer infrared wavelength light from infant stars and galaxies from as early as 13.7 billion years ago soon after the “Big Bang” formation of our known universe about 13.8 billion years ago as well as make observations much closer to home for infrared signatures of oxygen and water on exoplanets in our own Milky Way galaxy. By this coming summer, if all goes well with the various steps needed for a successful orbit, deployment and activation of the various systems, astronomers and cosmologists will start receiving data on the initial observations. As Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator said: “This is one-of-a-kind. It is the most advanced technology that is going to, if successful, open up secrets of the universe that will be just stupendous, if not almost overwhelming, providing a quantum leap of understanding of who we are, how we got here, what we are and how it all evolve.”

In a sense, the JWST is a time-traveling machine that can see what happened in the universe in the distant past. Dr. Kevin Hainline, an astronomer on the JWST NIRCam science team has given a number of lectures on the project including kid friendly version here that many of you may enjoy as well. On the NASA website, we can track the JWST as it makes its way to be deployed in space near the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 mi) from Earth – about 3.9 times further from us than the moon. As we wait to be “wowed” by what we learn and even more so by what we can accomplish when we put our best minds to tackle what seems impossible.

At ASEI, we celebrate the role of women in STEM and encourage DEI in workplace so  it is quite heartening to note that two out of four lead researches of the four most complex instruments (MIRI, NIRCAM, NIRSpec and NRISS) on JWST are women; Marcia Rieke, astronomy professor at the University of Arizona who worked on designing the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Gillian Wright, Director of the UK Astronomy Technology Center in Edinburgh, who worked on the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

As the world is captivated with recent advances in Aeropace – be it improving life on earth through exponentially efficient and economical space travel and  exploration  technologies or  space tourism or the possibility of colonizing Moon and Mars, ASEI is bringing some of our Aerospace experts together to conduct a one of kind event – the Aerospace Symposium for everyone. This will be the first event as part of our 34th National Convention on Jan 15th&16th , 2022 . Register now and mark your calendar. Don’t miss it! 

Post by Piyush Malik, President ASEI 

If you are looking to know more about the Aerospace symposium and opportunities to sponsor, feel free to reach out to Piyush or either of the Aerospace  Symposium Chairs Dr Shreekant Agrawal and Dr Ajay Kothari

Arjun Parth