A year ago, the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, which were jointly developed by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, became known. In just twelve months, the telescope’s discoveries have already changed what humanity knows about the universe.
It cost James Webb more than eight billion dollars and took more than 20 years to build. Its main goal is to search for life by discovering exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. Astronomers need to use giant space telescopes that collect large amounts of light to study distant and distant objects.
Current telescopes can detect small exoplanets like Earth. However, more sensitivity is required to begin to identify the chemical composition of these planets. Even Webb is barely strong enough to search some exoplanets for other kinds of life, i.e. gases in their atmospheres.
In this edition of El Debate, we analyze with our guests how the James Webb Telescope changed space science and what this means for us.
– Raul Goya, Engineer and Director of the Astronomical Observatory of the Sergio Arboleda University in Colombia.
– Cesar Fuentes, astronomer and member of the Center for Astrophysics and Related Technologies and Ph.D. in astrophysics from Harvard University.
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