How we sharpened the James Webb telescope’s vision from a million kilometres away
Benjamin Pope, Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University
After Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA’s US$10 billion (AU$15 billion) James Webb Space Telescope. There had not been such a leap forward in telescope technology since Hubble was launched in 1990.
En route to its deployment, Webb had to successfully navigate 344 potential points of failure. Thankfully, the launch went better than expected, and we could finally breathe again.
Six months later, Webb’s first images were...