President Joe Biden has decided to move up the unveiling of the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope to Monday at 5 p.m. He will unveil it from the White House with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
A live stream of the event will be available on NASA TV. The image will be available simultaneously on NASA’s website.
NASA will unveil additional images as planned on Tuesday along with Canadian Space Agency and European Space Agency representatives.
(more…)NASA Mission Update
NASA, in partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), will release the James Webb Space Telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data during a live broadcast beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 12, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Released one by one, these first images from the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope will demonstrate Webb at its full power as it begins its mission to unfold the infrared universe.
(more…)WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), will release its first full-color images and spectroscopic data on July 12, 2022. As the largest and most complex observatory ever launched into space, Webb has been going through a six-month period of preparation before it can begin science work, calibrating its instruments to its space environment and aligning its mirrors. This careful process, not to mention years of new technology development and mission planning, has built up to the first images and data: a demonstration of Webb at its full power, ready to begin its science mission and unfold the infrared universe.
(more…)
GREENBELT, Md. (NASA PR) — NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope observations of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa have revealed the presence of persistent water vapor – but, mysteriously, only in one hemisphere.
(more…)
By Thaddeus Cesari
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
GREENBELT, Md. — After successful completion of its final tests, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is being prepped for shipment to its launch site.
Engineering teams have completed Webb’s long-spanning comprehensive testing regimen at Northrop Grumman’s facilities. Webb’s many tests and checkpoints were designed to ensure that the world’s most complex space science observatory will operate as designed once in space.
(more…)
By Thaddeus Cesari
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
GREENBELT, Md. — February marked significant progress for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which completed its final functional performance tests at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California. Testing teams successfully completed two important milestones that confirmed the observatory’s internal electronics are all functioning as intended, and that the spacecraft and its four scientific instruments can send and receive data properly through the same network they will use in space. These milestones move Webb closer to being ready to launch in October.
(more…)
by Thaddeus Cesari
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
GREENBELT, Md. — Testing teams have successfully completed a critical milestone focused on demonstrating that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will respond to commands once in space.
Known as a “Ground Segment Test,” this is the first time commands to power on and test Webb’s scientific instruments have been sent to the fully-assembled observatory from its Mission Operations Center at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland.
(more…)
by Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Md. — On July 4, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) finished its primary mission, imaging about 75% of the starry sky as part of a two-year-long survey. In capturing this giant mosaic, TESS has found 66 new exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, as well as nearly 2,100 candidates astronomers are working to confirm.
(more…)
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Md. — Measurements from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have enabled astronomers to greatly improve their understanding of the bizarre environment of KELT-9 b, one of the hottest planets known.
“The weirdness factor is high with KELT-9 b,” said John Ahlers, an astronomer at Universities Space Research Association in Columbia, Maryland, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s a giant planet in a very close, nearly polar orbit around a rapidly rotating star, and these features complicate our ability to understand the star and its effects on the planet.”
(more…)
GREENBELT, Md. (NASA PR) — NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope’s 30 years of unlocking the beauty and mystery of space by unveiling a stunning new portrait of a firestorm of starbirth in a neighboring galaxy.
In this Hubble portrait, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the “Cosmic Reef,” because it resembles an undersea world.
(more…)