NASA is set to launch into space humanity’s largest and most powerful telescope, a $10 billion behemoth that can see into the universe's past.
There's a period of time after the Big Bang, when the universe was in its infancy and the very first stars were blinking into existence, that remains one of the most mysterious chapters in the history of the cosmos.
"It's kind of a cliché to say that it’s going to change the course of astronomy, but it might very well do that," Marcia Rieke, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, said. But the project has not been without controversy. Over the course of its development, the telescope ran billions of dollars over budget and was finished more than a decade behind schedule. For the thousands of scientists and engineers around the world involved with the project, it has been a long and often bumpy journey.The observatory will build on the legacy of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, which has been operating since 1990.
The telescope's enormous sunshield will also unfurl once the observatory reaches space. The diamond-shaped sunshield is designed to keep the telescope's mirror and instruments ultracold, allowing them to pick up the faintest heat signals in the universe without interference from Earth or the sun.
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