Will Sullivan, Staff Writer
December 13, 2021
(Inside Science) -- At 7:20 a.m. EST on Dec. 22, the largest and most powerful space telescope ever built is scheduled to hurtle into space from a launch point near Kourou, French Guiana. It will spend a month traveling roughly a million miles from Earth to a special spot called the second Lagrange point, or L2.
L2 is just 1% farther away from the sun than Earth is, forming a straight line with the star and planet. As Earth orbits the sun, so does L2 at the same speed, as if they were both attached to the sun by the same string. The telescope will travel in an ovular orbit around L2 -- from the perspective of the sun, Webb's orbit would look like a halo behind Earth. From this position, the telescope will observe the faint, distant light traveling through space from the earliest galaxies to form in the universe around 13.5 billion years ago. Webb will also learn more about the chemistry of the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system, the surface composition and evolution of bodies inside the solar system, and much, much more.
Part of the reason the telescope will be able to capture such distant signals and observe closer objects with a high level of detail is because of its destination. "At L2, we can meet all our challenging, top-level science requirements that require this thing to be supersensitive," said Paul Geithner, the deputy project manager for Webb. Other places in space don't have the same helpful alignment with the sun and Earth. So, what is it about L2 and its alignment that make for an ideal telescope location?...
