Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech and the long time listeners
Speaker 1: of this show know that I'm really interested in space
Speaker 1: and the technology we use to expand our understanding of
Speaker 1: the cosmos. As I record this, I am actually reading
Speaker 1: up on how the NASA Perseverance Rover has deposited the
Speaker 1: Ingenuity copter on the service of Mars, which is super exciting.
Speaker 1: But I'll have to do a follow up episode about
Speaker 1: the Perseverance and Ingenuity later on after more has actually happened.
Speaker 1: So let's get back to what I'm talking about today. Also,
Speaker 1: longtime listeners will know that I like to point out
Speaker 1: that space is always always trying to kill you, from
Speaker 1: the lack of oxygen to the proliferation of radiation that
Speaker 1: could really mess us up, to the long term effects
Speaker 1: of micro gravity. Spaces not where you want to spend
Speaker 1: any appreciable amount of time. There's just no atmosphere, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. But dad jokes aside, I do
Speaker 1: really love learning about space, and moreover, learning about the
Speaker 1: tech we use to pursue that learning. To that end,
Speaker 1: I thought I would do an episode about the James
Speaker 1: Webs Space Telescope. And you know, I'm I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in this telescope because I actually have a tattoo that's
Speaker 1: part of NASA history connected to this telescope. I even
Speaker 1: got that whole thing shot on video while I was
Speaker 1: getting the tattoo. But I'll talk about that a little
Speaker 1: bit more towards the end of the episode. So let's
Speaker 1: get into this now. I'm not going to dive into
Speaker 1: all the instruments and all the technology behind the James Webb.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll do a second episode where I go into
Speaker 1: that more detail because it is incredibly technical. Um it's
Speaker 1: it's phenomenal the technology that's going into place to make
Speaker 1: this thing work. But I really wanted to give more
Speaker 1: of a high level look at what the James Webb
Speaker 1: Space Telescope is and what it is supposed to do.
Speaker 1: So first things first, who was James Webb? Well, James E.
Speaker 1: Webb was the second person appointed as head of NASA.
Speaker 1: He served in that position from February nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: until October nineteen That meant he led NASA during the
Speaker 1: crucial years that saw the agency launched the first American
Speaker 1: into orbit, that would be Alan Shepard in May nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one to just before the launch of Apollo seven,
Speaker 1: which was the first Apollo mission to send an entire
Speaker 1: crew into orbit. The manned missions that NASA was pursuing
Speaker 1: understandably received a ton of attention and coverage, but Webb's
Speaker 1: goal was to balance the narrative of sending astronauts to orbit,
Speaker 1: you know, the human achievement of going into space and
Speaker 1: and later on going to the Moon. He wanted to
Speaker 1: balance that with the need to actually use those missions
Speaker 1: to help expand our understanding of science. He felt that
Speaker 1: he needed to make certain that there were always scientific
Speaker 1: elements to those missions in order to link the space
Speaker 1: race to gaining knowledge, to expanding our understanding of the universe. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: sending people out into space could potentially get reductive. It
Speaker 1: could end up being a political statement because really the
Speaker 1: United States was locking horns with the then Soviet Union
Speaker 1: in the space race. So he wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that we were building a foundation to learn more, not
Speaker 1: just to you know, show off. And I don't mean
Speaker 1: to reduce the achievements of the men and women who
Speaker 1: worked in the space industry at the time. Rather, this
Speaker 1: is all about perception and the political part of trying
Speaker 1: to get space programs together. The science is pretty darn
Speaker 1: cool no matter how you look at it. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: Web himself wasn't a scientist, but his work really helped
Speaker 1: shape NASA and allowed the organization to benefit from the
Speaker 1: support that he was able to get politically in order
Speaker 1: to conduct scientific experiments that we otherwise would not be
Speaker 1: able to do. Web was also able to form and
Speaker 1: leverage political relationships to make sure that the scientists and
Speaker 1: engineers back at NASA could realize their ambitions and goals.
Speaker 1: In fact, he was an expert at creating and maintaining
Speaker 1: those relationships like that was that was his forte and
Speaker 1: that's why NASA chose his name for the space Telescope.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's get back to that story now. Currently,
Speaker 1: the plan is to launch this spacecraft in October of
Speaker 1: this year, this year being twenty one in case you
Speaker 1: are listening to this at some point in the future
Speaker 1: and you're just going through the back catalog of tech
Speaker 1: Stuff episodes. Now, that is after several delays and hiccups
Speaker 1: that have pushed back this project that has had about
Speaker 1: a thirty year history, in fact longer if you want
Speaker 1: to be a little lucy goosey with definitions of history.
Speaker 1: And by that, I mean you could argue that the
Speaker 1: James Webb Space Telescope began its journey all the way
Speaker 1: back in September nine nine. That was before its predecessor,
Speaker 1: the Hubble Space Telescope, had even launched. The Hubble would
Speaker 1: go up in but scientists were already talking about the
Speaker 1: next step what would come after the Hubble. And this
Speaker 1: is one of the really cool things about science and technology.
Speaker 1: It's not enough to tackle really big challenges and then
Speaker 1: get them off the ground, so speak, you already need
Speaker 1: to be thinking ahead about what is going to come next,
Speaker 1: which sounds pretty exhausting to me, but really cool all
Speaker 1: the same. Also, I can kind of identify because I
Speaker 1: can't really reflect on the show I'm recording. I gotta
Speaker 1: already be thinking about the next show now. Granted that's
Speaker 1: orders of magnitude less complicated than I don't know, sending
Speaker 1: stuff into space anyway. In September, n NASA co hosted
Speaker 1: a workshop that focused pun intended on the next generations
Speaker 1: space telescope, and the other co host was the Space
Speaker 1: Telescope Science Institute or st S little c I. More
Speaker 1: than one experts in the fields of astronomy and engineering
Speaker 1: gathered to to start the process of outlining what the
Speaker 1: next generation of space telescopes should be able to do,
Speaker 1: How would we be able to make it do those things,
Speaker 1: where would we need to actually position the telescope in
Speaker 1: order to do it, and so on. Initially, the group
Speaker 1: considered the possibility of designing a near infrared telescope that
Speaker 1: would call the Moon home, or perhaps a very high
Speaker 1: Earth orbit. As it would turn out, we would go
Speaker 1: to a very specific high Earth orbit. Actually it's not
Speaker 1: really so much an Earth orbit, high solar orbit. Now,
Speaker 1: these discussions weren't resolved in a weekend or anything like that. Rather,
Speaker 1: they carried on for years as the experts debated the
Speaker 1: best course of action that would in theory, return the
Speaker 1: best results assuming mission success, of course, which is never
Speaker 1: a guarantee when we're talking about launching stuff into space.
Speaker 1: If you look at the list of attempted space missions
Speaker 1: over the course of our relatively brief space history, you
Speaker 1: know there's like a fift success rate depending on which
Speaker 1: versions you're looking at, so it is not a sure thing.
Speaker 1: A committee with formal recommendations wouldn't present their conclusions until
Speaker 1: seven years after those initial meetings, and I think that
Speaker 1: really helps illustrate that we're talking about really complicated technologies
Speaker 1: and missions here, and that that seven year span from
Speaker 1: initial ideation to recommendation is a great guide on how
Speaker 1: the project has slowly taken shape sense slowly but methodically,
Speaker 1: Like it has to be methodical because we're talking about
Speaker 1: plans where once we launch it, there's not a whole
Speaker 1: lot of opportunity to fix things if they go wrong.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, while discussions were ongoing as to
Speaker 1: what type of telescope would follow the Hubble, we got
Speaker 1: the Hubble, while the James Web Space Telescope first began
Speaker 1: to take shape during conversations that started in nine The
Speaker 1: Hubble's conception dates all the way back to the nineties.
Speaker 1: Before we called it the Hubble, it had a different
Speaker 1: and rather mundane name. We called it the Large Space Telescope,
Speaker 1: which is descriptive at least. But why would we bother
Speaker 1: with a space telescope in the first place, Well, here
Speaker 1: on Earth We've got lots of telescopes. Some of them
Speaker 1: are purely optical telescopes using lenses. They are all about
Speaker 1: capturing and bending light so that we can actually look
Speaker 1: at stuff that's really far away. We also have some
Speaker 1: that are radio telescopes. These are giant dishes that pick
Speaker 1: up faint radio signals, which then we process and interpret
Speaker 1: to determine what might have made those radio waves way
Speaker 1: on space, stuff like stars, quasars, galaxies, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: not necessarily, you know, aliens, not necessarily like artificially created
Speaker 1: radio signals. Typically we're talking about actual celestial bodies that
Speaker 1: generate radio waves. But these types of telescopes have a barrier,
Speaker 1: and that barrier is Earth's atmosphere. While we depend upon
Speaker 1: that atmosphere because you know, without it we would die,
Speaker 1: the atmosphere also absorbs, reflects and otherwise blocks some stuff
Speaker 1: from getting through. This isn't all bad, mind you. Our
Speaker 1: atmosphere is part of the protective layer we have that
Speaker 1: keeps us from being bombarded with cosmic radiation. But it
Speaker 1: does mean that if you're making observations of deep space
Speaker 1: and you're fighting against those layers of atmosphere in order
Speaker 1: to do it, and you're going to run up against
Speaker 1: some fundamental limitations of how sharp an image you can produce.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all these things just happen, right. We
Speaker 1: we've it's like having a foggy lens. You you're not
Speaker 1: able to see as far away. You're not able to
Speaker 1: see as clearly because we've got this atmosphere that's blurring
Speaker 1: the image. Putting a telescope out into space gets around
Speaker 1: that problem, right, I mean, the telescope can be outside
Speaker 1: the atmosphere and we get a clear view of the
Speaker 1: depths of space. A space telescope with the proper sensors
Speaker 1: can examine wavelengths of the electro magnetic spectrum that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to penetrate the air's atmosphere very effectively. I
Speaker 1: should also mention that the Hubble was not the first
Speaker 1: space telescope, but it did mark the most ambitious space
Speaker 1: telescope project at that time and for many decades. While
Speaker 1: the paper in nineteen six was the first to propose
Speaker 1: putting a telescope in orbit, years before anyone had managed
Speaker 1: to even launch the simplest of satellites, the first working
Speaker 1: group to concentrate on this challenge didn't really happen until
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four. The US Congress approved the project in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, and the following year engineers began to
Speaker 1: build the primary mirror for the telescope. The purpose of
Speaker 1: the telescope's mirror is to focus incoming light from far
Speaker 1: distant astronomical objects onto really a secondary mirror which then
Speaker 1: reflects that light into sensors. And now it's time to
Speaker 1: learn about optics. And I'm not using optics in that
Speaker 1: corporate speak way of this is gonna look bad for us,
Speaker 1: and our shareholders are going to be angry. I'm using
Speaker 1: optics the proper way. Gosh darn ittt, I hate corporate speak,
Speaker 1: all right. So, a refracting telescope is one that uses
Speaker 1: lenses made out of curved glass to collect and focus
Speaker 1: LIE eight so that we can get a good look
Speaker 1: at distant objects. A simple refracting telescope would have two lenses.
Speaker 1: You've got one which is the at the large end
Speaker 1: of the telescope. This is the end that's pointing up
Speaker 1: towards the sky. That lens gathers light and it bends
Speaker 1: that light, the incoming light, into a pathway that converges
Speaker 1: on a point that's inside the telescope, and rather than
Speaker 1: the light just traveling straight down the tube of the telescope,
Speaker 1: if there were no lens there would just go straight instead,
Speaker 1: it all gets focused onto that single focal point. At
Speaker 1: the other end of the telescope is a eye piece,
Speaker 1: a second piece of curved glass much smaller in size,
Speaker 1: and it acts like a magnifying lens with a focal
Speaker 1: point that hits that same spot inside the telescope. This
Speaker 1: lens effectively unbends the light so that we can see
Speaker 1: a representation of what is out there in space as
Speaker 1: if that stuff were much much closer to us. For
Speaker 1: this to work, the lenses have to be very smooth,
Speaker 1: they have to be curved precisely, and they have to
Speaker 1: be the right distance apart from one another, otherwise the
Speaker 1: image won't be clear. Focusing a telescope is a matter
Speaker 1: of making very fine adjustments in the distance between the
Speaker 1: eye piece and the other lens so that those focal
Speaker 1: points line up properly. And lenses work okay, but they
Speaker 1: have some pretty major drawbacks. One is that they get
Speaker 1: pretty heavy, especially the bigger they are. It's hard to
Speaker 1: make thin curved glass that can serve as a lens,
Speaker 1: and so as lenses get larger, they get thicker, and
Speaker 1: they get heavier and heavy is not a great feature
Speaker 1: when you're talking about shooting stuff up into space where
Speaker 1: every pound or kilogram really counts. You also can't, you know,
Speaker 1: collapse it. You can't make it go into a smaller
Speaker 1: form without crushing the glass and turning it into silica.
Speaker 1: So that's not not a great great solution. However, we
Speaker 1: can make really thin mirrors curve to mirrors, and mirrors
Speaker 1: bend light as well, though now you're talking about reflecting
Speaker 1: light rather than refracting light. So a typical reflecting telescope
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a cylindrical drum that has an
Speaker 1: eye piece near the top end of it, and at
Speaker 1: the base of the cylinder is a curved mirror that
Speaker 1: collects light that's coming into the telescope. It reflects that
Speaker 1: light up to a smaller mirror closer to the top
Speaker 1: of the telescope, and the smaller mirror is angled to
Speaker 1: reflect that light toward an eyepiece which you look into
Speaker 1: um and that may still have a magnifying lens part
Speaker 1: attached to it. This approach does mean, however, that that
Speaker 1: secondary mirror can block a little bit of the incoming light,
Speaker 1: so the image can be a little dim Depending upon
Speaker 1: the design of the reflecting telescope, mirrors can weigh way
Speaker 1: less than lenses. You just need a very reflective surface,
Speaker 1: and so they are ideal for the purpose says of
Speaker 1: a space telescope. Using curved mirrors around a detector allows
Speaker 1: the telescope to collect and then direct light that can
Speaker 1: then be captured by whatever that detector is, which is
Speaker 1: effectively acting like the eye piece lens. It's it's typically
Speaker 1: like a camera or some other sensor. The Hubble's primary
Speaker 1: mirror measured two point four meters across or seven point
Speaker 1: nine feet. The company making the mirror was the Perkin
Speaker 1: Elmer Corporation, and it took years to make this mirror.
Speaker 1: The cameras aboard the Hubble would be able to take
Speaker 1: images in the visible, infrared, and ultra violet bands of light,
Speaker 1: but primarily was focused on again pun intended the visible spectrum.
Speaker 1: In n three, the Large Space Telescope officially became the
Speaker 1: Hubble Space Telescope, honoring Edwin Hubble, this astronomer who had
Speaker 1: passed away in nineteen fifty three had proven that what
Speaker 1: we once believed to be merely clouds of gas and
Speaker 1: dust out there in space were in fact other galaxies,
Speaker 1: and that they were moving away from our galaxy. So
Speaker 1: naming the telescope after him was a fitting tribute. Work
Speaker 1: continued on the Hubble tragedy would delay the planned launch
Speaker 1: of the space Telescope WIN. On January ninety six, the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart a little more than a
Speaker 1: minute after it had launched, losing all hands aboard. NASA
Speaker 1: suspended the Space Shuttle program for more than a year
Speaker 1: in order to investigate the cause of the disaster and
Speaker 1: to take measures to prevent it from happening again. And
Speaker 1: since the Hubble was to be lifted into space inside
Speaker 1: a Space Shuttle, ad meant that its own launch would
Speaker 1: have to be pushed back. Hubble would launch in nineteen,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, a year after scientists were already
Speaker 1: talking about the next space telescope. A few months after deployment,
Speaker 1: scientists discovered that the Hubble's mirror had a slight imperfection
Speaker 1: in the heurvature. And by slight, i'm talking about an
Speaker 1: error that measured just to microns, and a micron is
Speaker 1: point zero zero one millimeters, So we're talking about an
Speaker 1: error that would be imperceptible to humans without the aid
Speaker 1: of special instruments to measure it. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'll talk briefly about the mission that's set out to
Speaker 1: adjust for this error, and then we'll move on to
Speaker 1: the James Web Space Telescope. But first, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. All right, let's get back to that mistake
Speaker 1: in the Hubble. So that tiny mirror curvature error meant
Speaker 1: that the Hubble was unable to achieve the level of
Speaker 1: focus that scientists were hoping for. It could still take pictures,
Speaker 1: it's just they weren't quite as sharp as they were
Speaker 1: supposed to be. So it worked just not as well
Speaker 1: as anticipated. The scientists and engineers who designed the Hubble
Speaker 1: had always intended it to be a technology that could
Speaker 1: be upgraded by sending astronauts up there to make adjustments.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Hubble was and still is in Earth orbit.
Speaker 1: It's it was accessible for Space Shuttle missions, so that
Speaker 1: was always part of the plan, and so some of
Speaker 1: the early work in that regard of upgrades really revolved
Speaker 1: around finding ways to work around this tiny error in
Speaker 1: the mirror's curvature. The first mission to really address this
Speaker 1: happened in late nine when astronauts installed two new instruments
Speaker 1: that can actually accept light from this imperfect mirror, and
Speaker 1: the kind of a post processing approach correct for that error. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, they didn't fix the mirror because that
Speaker 1: would have been incredibly difficult. I'm not even sure how
Speaker 1: they would have managed it. So instead they installed sensors
Speaker 1: or cameras with systems that could correct for that imperfect action,
Speaker 1: which was a pretty neat approach. The Hubble played a
Speaker 1: central role in expanding our understanding of the universe. Scientists
Speaker 1: used it to study questions about the age and evolution
Speaker 1: of the universe itself. Hubble observations led to the confirmation
Speaker 1: that supermassive black holes do in fact exist at the
Speaker 1: centers of galaxies. Using the Hubble, scientists were able to
Speaker 1: figure out how far away other galaxies were from our own.
Speaker 1: The Hubble captured images of weird stars, some of them
Speaker 1: much more active and unstable than our own son. We
Speaker 1: should be thankful for that, because our son mostly behaves itself.
Speaker 1: The Hubble looked at how pieces of a comet crashed
Speaker 1: into Jupiter, leaving behind large marks on the planet's surface.
Speaker 1: Scientists used the Hubble to study various moons in our
Speaker 1: Solar System, leading to the discovery that Jupiter's moon Europa
Speaker 1: has oxygen in its atmosphere. The Hubble caught images of
Speaker 1: proto stars and wide angled views of the universe that
Speaker 1: showed more than fift nd galaxies out there, all before
Speaker 1: the formal recommendation to NASA and the European Space Agency
Speaker 1: that they get to work on the next space telescope.
Speaker 1: But let's move on. Even though we could talk a
Speaker 1: lot more about the Hubble, the Hubble is still in
Speaker 1: operation today, even though the last servicing mission was way
Speaker 1: back in two thousand nine. The James Webb Space Telescope
Speaker 1: won't be able to get that kind of upkeep, and
Speaker 1: that's because it's going to occupy an orbit far away
Speaker 1: from Earth, far too far away for us to access
Speaker 1: easily for stuff like maintenance, and that means we need
Speaker 1: to make sure everything is right before we deploy it.
Speaker 1: Construction on the James Webb Space Telescope began in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, and it took seven years to make all
Speaker 1: the mirror segments. They're eighteen in total. Their hexagonal mirror
Speaker 1: panels that fit together and collectively they serve as the
Speaker 1: primary mirror for the telescope. So the James Web Space
Speaker 1: Telescope is going to orbit the second lagrange point a
Speaker 1: K A L two. But those are just words, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, what does that actually mean? Well, getting stuff
Speaker 1: into space is hard, but getting stuff to stay where
Speaker 1: you need it to once you get it out in
Speaker 1: space is also hard. You can include stuff like thrusters
Speaker 1: to help a spacecraft maintain its relative position to some
Speaker 1: other point of reference, but thrusters require energy to operate,
Speaker 1: so you can use fuel that fuels heavy has a
Speaker 1: limited resource. There's no refueling stations out there, so you
Speaker 1: can't top off the fuel tank once it runs low.
Speaker 1: So you could potentially use like an ion drive and
Speaker 1: power it some other way, such as with a radioactive
Speaker 1: decay or something. But it would be way easier if
Speaker 1: you could just PLoP something onto a specific point in
Speaker 1: space and it would just kind of stay there. And
Speaker 1: by specific point, I mean relative to something else. It's
Speaker 1: not just occupy a a a point in space and
Speaker 1: that's where it stays. As the rest of the Solar
Speaker 1: system continues to move away from it. So a smarty
Speaker 1: pants mathematician named Joseph Louis Lagrange began to think about
Speaker 1: orbital paths and whether or not it might be possible
Speaker 1: to find points in which three different bodies could orbit
Speaker 1: each other but stay in the same positions relative to
Speaker 1: one another. So, in other words, unlike say Earthen Mars,
Speaker 1: let's use that as an example, We've got the Sun,
Speaker 1: We've got Earth, We've got Mars. Three bodies. Earthen Mars
Speaker 1: both orbit the Sun, but they both do so at
Speaker 1: different rates. So sometimes Earthen Mars are on the same
Speaker 1: side of the Sun, like they're both on. Let's if
Speaker 1: we're looking top down, let's imagine that both the Earth
Speaker 1: and Mars are on the right side of the Sun.
Speaker 1: Mars is a little further out from Earth. Other times though,
Speaker 1: during those orbits, you get them on opposite sides of
Speaker 1: the Sun. Maybe the Earth's on the right side but
Speaker 1: Mars is on the left side. The Sun's in between them,
Speaker 1: so they are not in the same position relative to
Speaker 1: each other throughout their orbits. In fact, it takes about
Speaker 1: two years for the two planets to get close to
Speaker 1: each other. That's why any planned missions to Mars that
Speaker 1: involves sending people up there usually also involved camping out
Speaker 1: on the planet for you know, a couple of years
Speaker 1: in order to be able to return. However, a stable
Speaker 1: orbit would mean that the three bodies would remain in
Speaker 1: their same relative positions. So if Earth is one of
Speaker 1: the three and the Sun is another, the third body
Speaker 1: would remain in the same relative position in its orbital path.
Speaker 1: So this would be like if the Earth and Mars
Speaker 1: were always lined up in their respective orbits around the Sun.
Speaker 1: So Mars would always be behind Earth further out, and
Speaker 1: that would mean Mars would have to be traveling faster
Speaker 1: through space to keep pace right, because it's traveling greater distance.
Speaker 1: It's a it's orbit is arger, it's traveling further. It
Speaker 1: would have to go faster in order to maintain the
Speaker 1: same position relative to the Earth. That's not happening. However,
Speaker 1: through mathematics, Lagrange identified five points where this sort of
Speaker 1: orbit would be possible. So there are five points we've
Speaker 1: identified where something in that position would pretty much stay
Speaker 1: there relative to the Earth and the Sun. And that's
Speaker 1: because these bodies would be exerting roughly equal gravitational forces
Speaker 1: on that third body out in space, and the same
Speaker 1: amount of force as that third body was experiencing in
Speaker 1: the form of centripetal force. That's a lot of words.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds confusing, but imagine you've got a
Speaker 1: game of tug of war going on, right, and both
Speaker 1: sides are of equal strength, and you've got a flag
Speaker 1: in the center of the tug of war rope, and
Speaker 1: both sides begin to pull, but they are equally matched.
Speaker 1: Neither is able to gain any ground on the other,
Speaker 1: so that flag just stays put. It's being pulled in
Speaker 1: both directions, but at equal strength, so it's not moving anywhere.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what a lagrange point is like, only
Speaker 1: there's no physical rope holding anything because it's all about
Speaker 1: gravity and centripeleical force. Lagrange point one is between Earth
Speaker 1: and the Sun, and it's at this point that we
Speaker 1: put solar observatories like the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite
Speaker 1: or SOHO. And as you would imagine, the point for
Speaker 1: these kinds of observation platforms is to have instruments dedicated
Speaker 1: to observing the Sun and solar events. But it's not
Speaker 1: a great location to put something if you want to
Speaker 1: look at other stuff further out in the universe. Because
Speaker 1: the amount of electromagnetic energy that's given off by the
Speaker 1: Sun tends to drown out everything else, it's not a
Speaker 1: good place to put that kind of thing. Lagrange point, to, however,
Speaker 1: is on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun,
Speaker 1: and it's at a distance of one point five million
Speaker 1: kilometers or around one million miles from Earth. The Moon,
Speaker 1: by comparison, is three eight four thousand, four hundred kilometers
Speaker 1: or two d thirty eight thousand, nine hundred miles from Earth,
Speaker 1: so the James Webb Space Telescope will be a far
Speaker 1: away from Home, much further away than the Moon is.
Speaker 1: L two is the old stomping grounds for a few
Speaker 1: other instruments that we had previously placed there. One was
Speaker 1: the Wilkinson Microwave and asotropy probe. And I have no
Speaker 1: idea if I'm saying that correctly. I probably should have
Speaker 1: looked up the pronunciation beforehand. I apologize for that. We'll
Speaker 1: call it woe map w m a P. It taught
Speaker 1: us an enormous amount about the universe, largely by studying
Speaker 1: cosmic microwave background radiation or CMB radiation. That's the oldest
Speaker 1: light in the universe. It's the stuff that occurred shortly
Speaker 1: after the Big Bang according to the Big Bang theory,
Speaker 1: and that is it blows my mind to read up
Speaker 1: about that stuff. The second instrument that was previously at
Speaker 1: L two was called PLANK and it also studied CMB.
Speaker 1: The third was the Herschel Space Observatory, which was another
Speaker 1: infrared space telescope. That one operated until until it ran
Speaker 1: out of coolant, and all three of those instruments have
Speaker 1: long been deactivated and relocated to an orbit outside of
Speaker 1: L two, making it free for the James web Space Telescope,
Speaker 1: now the Hubble Space Telescope orbits the Earth, but again
Speaker 1: the James Webb Space Telescope orbits the Sun. Technically it's
Speaker 1: also orbiting the L two point itself, So if you
Speaker 1: think of the L two point as orbiting the Sun,
Speaker 1: this is orbiting the L two point kind of like
Speaker 1: how the Moon orbits the Earth and Earth orbits the
Speaker 1: Sun similar to that. So it will have a path
Speaker 1: that takes it around the orbit of L two every
Speaker 1: six months or so, and it will stay in line
Speaker 1: with Earth during Earth's own orbit of the Sun. So
Speaker 1: in other words, the James Web Space Telescope is always
Speaker 1: going to be uh right back behind where the Earth
Speaker 1: is in its orbit. The James Webb Telescope will occasionally
Speaker 1: need to make some slight adjustments in order to maintain
Speaker 1: its position and orientation. It turns out that those lagrange points,
Speaker 1: some of them are stable, meaning if you put something there,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna stay there, and some of them were
Speaker 1: kind of semi stable, and they require minute adjustments in
Speaker 1: order to maintain position. The L two is one of those,
Speaker 1: so once in a while, in fact, like every twenty
Speaker 1: three days or so, they'll have to be a very
Speaker 1: slight adjustment in order for the James Web Space Telescope
Speaker 1: to maintain its position. It's not a lot of work
Speaker 1: to do it, but it is something that has to
Speaker 1: happen regularly, or as you would imagine, you quickly start
Speaker 1: to fall out of step. Now, the James Webb Space
Speaker 1: Telescope has a large shield that will protect it from
Speaker 1: radiation coming from the Sun. That shield is actually made
Speaker 1: up of a membrane. I'll talk about it a little
Speaker 1: bit more, uh in a second and down. It's also
Speaker 1: to protect it from radiation that's reflected off of bodies
Speaker 1: like the Earth and the Moon. It will effectively shade
Speaker 1: the mirror side of the telescope so that the telescope
Speaker 1: can gather distant light. It's orbit around L two will
Speaker 1: also mean that the spacecraft is going to avoid shadows
Speaker 1: that are cast by Earth in the Moon, which would
Speaker 1: otherwise affect its view outward to the universe. Now, the
Speaker 1: type of light that the James Webb Space Telescope is
Speaker 1: really relying upon is primarily light in the infrared spectrum.
Speaker 1: We can feel infrared light, we can experience it as heat,
Speaker 1: but we can't see it unaided. Right it's outside the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum of light. The telescope will be seeking out
Speaker 1: infrared light from distant sources, which means trace amounts are
Speaker 1: going to be very faint, and that's why the telescope
Speaker 1: needs an effective heat shield, or else the heat from
Speaker 1: nearby sources primarily the Sun and surfaces that are reflecting
Speaker 1: light from the Sun, that would be all the Tell
Speaker 1: scope would be able to pick up otherwise. In fact,
Speaker 1: the telescope is so sensitive that the electronics and computer
Speaker 1: that attached to it are on the shield side of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft because they generate heat, so rather than have
Speaker 1: them close to the telescope part and potentially corrupt results
Speaker 1: because the heat generated by the electronics is strong enough
Speaker 1: to to affect it. It's actually located on the other
Speaker 1: side of the heat shield, on the hot side and
Speaker 1: on the cold side. On the shield side facing the sun,
Speaker 1: the temperature on that surface will reach around eighty five
Speaker 1: degrees celsius or a hundred eighty five fahrenheit. So if
Speaker 1: it got much warmer, it would be possible to actually
Speaker 1: boil water on that side of the spacecraft. But on
Speaker 1: the mirror side, the telescope side, things are way different.
Speaker 1: The temperature will be around minus two hundred thirty three
Speaker 1: degrees celsius or minus three fahrenheit. Now you can see
Speaker 1: from this incredible difference in timber chures that it is
Speaker 1: of paramount importance to keep the telescope in the proper
Speaker 1: orientation with the shield side facing the sun. That's one
Speaker 1: of the big reasons we're putting it at L two.
Speaker 1: After launch, it will take the telescope about thirty days
Speaker 1: to reach the L two orbital point. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: It will make most of that journey right away it's
Speaker 1: that last bit that takes the longest, as the goal
Speaker 1: is to give the telescope a push just hard enough
Speaker 1: so that it arrives at its proper spot to enter
Speaker 1: its orbital path around L two. And I think of
Speaker 1: it kind of like curling the sport, where you know,
Speaker 1: you slide weights down an iced surface, only you know,
Speaker 1: in this case we're talking about three dimensions, not two,
Speaker 1: and we're also talking about being in space, not on
Speaker 1: the ice. And also the weight in this case is
Speaker 1: a telescope that's worth a few billion dollars. Also, there
Speaker 1: are no Canadians out there sweeping ice into or out
Speaker 1: of the pathway. But otherwise it's exactly the same as curling.
Speaker 1: Another reason we're putting it in the L two orbit
Speaker 1: is that because it will always be in the same
Speaker 1: position relative to Earth's orbit, which means we can communicate
Speaker 1: with that telescope relatively easily. Communications will carry out through
Speaker 1: radio signals, and one of three large antennas here on
Speaker 1: Earth will be in contact with the spacecraft at any
Speaker 1: given time. They are located in California in the United States, Spain,
Speaker 1: and Australia, so that at any time of day, there's
Speaker 1: the chance to be able to establish communications with the telescope.
Speaker 1: This collectively is called the Deep Space Network, which sounds
Speaker 1: like we've got a lot of antenna floating out there
Speaker 1: in space, but really it's more about having the infrastructure
Speaker 1: here on Earth that lets us monitor our instruments that
Speaker 1: are out in space, no matter what part of Earth
Speaker 1: is facing towards those instruments at any given time. Up
Speaker 1: to twice a day, the telescope will connect with Earth
Speaker 1: so that scientists can upload new instructions to the telescope
Speaker 1: and download the gathered data from the telescope. The plan, however,
Speaker 1: is to really upload a whole week's worth of commands
Speaker 1: all at once, and then occasionally do updates, like if
Speaker 1: you need to tweak things, you could send up another
Speaker 1: up link later in the week. I think it's worthwhile
Speaker 1: to talk a bit about the planned launch for the telescope.
Speaker 1: It's to happen in French Guyana, that's the chosen launch point.
Speaker 1: It will be carried up into space on an Arean
Speaker 1: five heavy lift launch vehicle. That name a vehicle might
Speaker 1: sound a little unfamiliar to my fellow Americans. It was
Speaker 1: to me, and it's a vehicle that's used by the
Speaker 1: European Space Agency or e s A. The launch up
Speaker 1: to space will take about eight minutes of thrust to
Speaker 1: get up there, and a half hour after its launch,
Speaker 1: the telescope will separate from its uh it's little faring
Speaker 1: with the remains of the launch vehicle and continue on
Speaker 1: its journey by itself. The telescope will be on its
Speaker 1: trajectory out toward L two, though there will be a
Speaker 1: couple of different trajectory correction maneuvers made along the way
Speaker 1: to ensure it reaches its destination properly. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'll walk through the rest of the deployment process of
Speaker 1: the telescope, and we'll talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: telescope itself and some of the things it's going to
Speaker 1: be looking for, and we'll also get to talk about
Speaker 1: my tattoo. And like I said, perhaps in a subsequent episode,
Speaker 1: I'll go into more detail about the telescopes mechanical systems
Speaker 1: and instruments. But let first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: So before the break, I talked about the launch and
Speaker 1: the separation of the James Webb Space Telescope from the
Speaker 1: launch vehicle, and assuming all of that goes as planned,
Speaker 1: here's what should happen in the following minutes, hours, days, weeks, etcetera.
Speaker 1: At about thirty three minutes into the mission, the spacecraft
Speaker 1: will deploy it's solar array. This is an array of
Speaker 1: solar panels that will harvest energy from the sun help
Speaker 1: power the telescope. So it's on one side of this telescope.
Speaker 1: It's on the aft side, the rear side of the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: if you think of it that way. It's a little
Speaker 1: weird to call it aft because until the whole thing
Speaker 1: is deployed, you can't really tell what is for and
Speaker 1: what is aft. It looks kind of like a rectangular
Speaker 1: spacecraft floating out in space, and one panel on one
Speaker 1: side of the rectangle folds down, and that's your that's
Speaker 1: your panel of solar or your rather your array of
Speaker 1: solar panels, I should say. Well. Two hours after having launched,
Speaker 1: the spacecraft will release its high gain antenna. This is
Speaker 1: a focused directional antenna designed to target radio signals with
Speaker 1: great precision. This is how we communicate with the James
Speaker 1: Web Space Telescope. It's the antenna that receives and transmits
Speaker 1: information and it's uh the same sort of thing that
Speaker 1: we use for long range wireless networks here on Earth.
Speaker 1: It will actually fully deploy within that first day of
Speaker 1: the mission. It's released early on, but it takes a
Speaker 1: while for it to fully deploy. Twelve hours into the
Speaker 1: journey and we'll get our first trajectory correction maneuvers. The
Speaker 1: spacecraft has small rocket engines on which it can fire
Speaker 1: thrusters and very quick precise burns and thus make course corrections.
Speaker 1: Another trajectory correction will happen a couple of days later
Speaker 1: as it continues its journey. The spacecraft's sun shield is
Speaker 1: in two very large panels, or palettes as NASA calls them.
Speaker 1: The shield that is opposite the solar arrays. Remember that
Speaker 1: that folds down first, while on the opposite side of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft is what is called the forward shield, and
Speaker 1: that will first deploy by folding down away from the telescope,
Speaker 1: so it's opposite where the solar panel arrays have folded down,
Speaker 1: and once deployed, the aft palette will do the same. Now,
Speaker 1: this one's on the aim side as the solar array,
Speaker 1: so it folds down and it ends up being parallel
Speaker 1: to the solar array. The series of panels that are
Speaker 1: collecting light and powering the telescope. Then the telescope apparatus
Speaker 1: will extend outward from the base of the spacecraft. It
Speaker 1: kind of telescopes out if you will. This part of
Speaker 1: the process is called tower deployment. So really it's just
Speaker 1: like if you think of an old radio antenna where
Speaker 1: you would extend the antenna. That's effectively what's happening here.
Speaker 1: It's about creating a little more distance between the telescope
Speaker 1: itself and the solar shield so that there's not any
Speaker 1: heat transfer, because again, this thing is incredibly sensitive to heat.
Speaker 1: Then the spacecraft will deploy a solar membrane. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like foil, and by deploy, I mean it unrolls
Speaker 1: this foil so that it spreads across the aft and
Speaker 1: forward sun shield palettes and then connects to two ex
Speaker 1: endable arms. Those extendable arms then extend, pulling that membrane
Speaker 1: further outward to form the solar shield. And I get
Speaker 1: that it can be a little hard to understand what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about here, but imagine it's kind of like
Speaker 1: stretching a blanket outward, only in this case, the blanket
Speaker 1: is meant to keep the heat off the telescope rather
Speaker 1: than trap heat. In eleven days into the mission, the
Speaker 1: telescope will start it's cryo cooler to start to cool
Speaker 1: the telescope components down to operating temperature, and then the
Speaker 1: telescope will deploy its secondary mirror. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: that for a second. Imagine a satellite dish like the
Speaker 1: kind we would have here on Earth for you know,
Speaker 1: cable or whatever. Now, normally you would have the dish
Speaker 1: and then suspended above and the dish like at the
Speaker 1: center of the dish and above it you would have
Speaker 1: an antenna be held there, and the idea being that
Speaker 1: this parabola of the dish is reflecting radio signals up
Speaker 1: to that antenna so that you get a good, strong signal.
Speaker 1: That's the idea here. Well, the telescope is similar, except
Speaker 1: instead of having an antenna suspended above the parabola, it's
Speaker 1: a small mirror and it's this mirror's job, the secondary mirror,
Speaker 1: to reflect light from the primary mirror down into the
Speaker 1: sensors for the telescope. It's it's actually directing the collected
Speaker 1: light to the instruments on the James Web Space Telescope itself,
Speaker 1: So it's a mirror that's pointing back. It's kind of
Speaker 1: selfie like it's pointing back at the telescope. Now, twelve
Speaker 1: days in, the telescope will begin wing deployment. Now, these
Speaker 1: wings aren't meant for flying, the rather wings of the
Speaker 1: primary mirror. You might remember I mentioned that the primary
Speaker 1: mirror for the James Webb Space Telescope is made up
Speaker 1: of hexagonal panels, eighteen of them. And those hexagonal panels
Speaker 1: mean that you can actually have these foldable seg mints
Speaker 1: of the telescope unfold and connect together so that the
Speaker 1: edges of one hexagon line up with the edges of
Speaker 1: other hexagons, and collectively the eighteen hexagons make the primary mirror.
Speaker 1: This is different from the Hubble Space Telescope, which had
Speaker 1: an unbroken single piece as a mirror. So a very
Speaker 1: interesting approach here. Uh. Those panels, by the way, are
Speaker 1: incredibly reflective and very sensitive. They look amazing. You can
Speaker 1: see pictures and videos of them online. I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you check them out. They're gorgeous. So the first wing
Speaker 1: unfolds and joins the central collection of hexagonal panels twelve
Speaker 1: days in and fourteen days in the secondary wing will unfold,
Speaker 1: and then you have the full primary mirror made up
Speaker 1: of all these hexagons. However, it won't be actually focused yet,
Speaker 1: it'll just be in the main position where they're all
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, next to each other. At thirty
Speaker 1: three days, the telescope will begin effectively field testing. The
Speaker 1: instruments will come on and engineers will point the telescope
Speaker 1: to a crowded area of space, you know, someplace it's
Speaker 1: got a lot of stars in it, it's generating a
Speaker 1: good amount of light. This is just to make sure
Speaker 1: that the telescope is in fact detecting light, that the
Speaker 1: light is hitting the mirrors, that's getting reflected and it's
Speaker 1: being picked up by the telescope sensors. So at this
Speaker 1: stage the mirrors are not aligned properly to get super
Speaker 1: sharp images. It's really just to verify that everything is
Speaker 1: actually kind of working, assuming it is. Then around forty
Speaker 1: four days into the mission, the telescope will begin making
Speaker 1: fine adjustments to each of the mirrors that have them
Speaker 1: line up to form the prime mirror, and the secondary
Speaker 1: mirror will also get fine tuned adjustments in order to
Speaker 1: start to bring things into focus. And this is a
Speaker 1: painstaking process. It's one that involves lots of motors that
Speaker 1: will talk out in a subsequent episode, but just know
Speaker 1: that it's about a lot of tiny adjustments. It will
Speaker 1: take actually about three months after the launch for the
Speaker 1: telescope to start returning images that are around the quality
Speaker 1: we would expect from it for the rest of its mission.
Speaker 1: It will, however, be about six months after launch before
Speaker 1: the telescope actually gets down to some serious work and
Speaker 1: starts to collect data we hope will tell us more
Speaker 1: about our universe. So what kind of stuff is it
Speaker 1: going to be looking for. Well, part of that will
Speaker 1: be evidence of how the first galaxies formed billions of
Speaker 1: years ago, to learn more about the evolution of the
Speaker 1: universe itself. We've got a lot of hypotheses about how
Speaker 1: the universe formed. This telescope is going to seek out
Speaker 1: information that will either lend support or maybe call into
Speaker 1: question those hypotheses. It will also look at dust clouds
Speaker 1: so that we can learn more about how stuff like
Speaker 1: stars and planets form over billions of years. Again, we
Speaker 1: got a lot of thoughts about this, and this telescope
Speaker 1: will help us gain a deeper understanding of cosmological events
Speaker 1: and because the James Webb is relying on infrared light
Speaker 1: that in for a light it can penetrate stuff like
Speaker 1: dust clouds, so we'll be able to get better information
Speaker 1: about those formations in the universe. For a telescope like
Speaker 1: the Hubble, which primarily relied on visible light, we were
Speaker 1: really limited because the dust clouds appeared opaque to that
Speaker 1: kind of telescope. But the James Webb will be able
Speaker 1: to see through and into these dust clouds and we'll
Speaker 1: get a lot more information about them. So a lot
Speaker 1: about what the James Webb Space Telescope is going to
Speaker 1: be exploring will relate to questions about how massive celestial
Speaker 1: bodies form over time, from planets to suns to entire galaxies,
Speaker 1: and how they evolve. These are really big cosmological subjects.
Speaker 1: But the telescope will also come in handy when we
Speaker 1: start looking at various extrasolar planets, meaning it's outside of
Speaker 1: our own Solar system. The telescope will give us more
Speaker 1: information about stuff like the atmosphere around distant planets. We've
Speaker 1: identified a lot of exoplanets that exist in what we
Speaker 1: call the Goldilocks zone, that is, the planets exist in
Speaker 1: an orbit that's the right range of distance from their
Speaker 1: host star, so that liquid water could potentially exist on
Speaker 1: those planets. Now, that doesn't actually mean that there is
Speaker 1: water on any of those planets, but rather that the
Speaker 1: planet should be at a temperature that is warm enough
Speaker 1: to have liquid water on it, but not so warm
Speaker 1: that liquid water would just evaporate off of it. The
Speaker 1: distance a planet should be from its host star is
Speaker 1: dependent upon stuff like the star's size and its age.
Speaker 1: That tells you how far away a planet would need
Speaker 1: to be in order for liquid water to exist there.
Speaker 1: There are other elements as well. That's getting into a
Speaker 1: whole rabbit hole. Well, the James Web Space Telescope should
Speaker 1: be able to tell us about whether planet it's like
Speaker 1: that have an atmosphere and what that atmosphere's composition should be.
Speaker 1: To do this, they'll use a couple of different things together,
Speaker 1: the transit method, which is where you're looking for the
Speaker 1: existence of planets by looking at the dimming of light
Speaker 1: coming from a star. That indicates that something has passed
Speaker 1: between the star and you. So if you detect this
Speaker 1: and it's happening at regular intervals, you can make the
Speaker 1: guess that there is an orbit there's something in orbit
Speaker 1: around that star that's blocking a little bit of light
Speaker 1: at every given increment of time, however long it may be.
Speaker 1: And then we would also use spectroscopy, which is in
Speaker 1: practice where you measure the intensity of light at different
Speaker 1: wavelengths of light. So by determining which wavelengths of light
Speaker 1: are more present, we can start to draw conclusions about
Speaker 1: stuff that might be in a planet's atmosphere. So we
Speaker 1: have to remember that's light that's passing through the atmosphere
Speaker 1: from its host star. So you kind of take a fingerprint,
Speaker 1: a spectral fingerprint of that star's light. You say, this
Speaker 1: star is giving off light, and these are the the
Speaker 1: intensity of the different frequencies of light it's giving off. However,
Speaker 1: when the planet passes over the star, we start to
Speaker 1: detect little changes in that digital fingerprint that to us
Speaker 1: would indicate things that are in that planet's atmosphere that
Speaker 1: could be absorbing those wavelengths of light. And thus we
Speaker 1: can say, hey, turns out we think there's oxygen on
Speaker 1: the atmosphere or in the atmosphere of this planet, which
Speaker 1: is really cool, right. Well, scientists will also use the
Speaker 1: telescope to study stuff that's in our own solar system,
Speaker 1: not just outside of it, like our good buddy Mars.
Speaker 1: Working in concert with orbiters and landers that are dedicated
Speaker 1: to studying Mars, the James web Space Telescope will help
Speaker 1: us get a better understanding of Mars' atmosphere, it's weather,
Speaker 1: pa letterns, it will help us, you know, back up
Speaker 1: the information that's being found by these other instruments, and
Speaker 1: it will also study other bodies within our own solar system,
Speaker 1: not just Mars, but other planets as well. It's all
Speaker 1: really exciting stuff, in fact, exciting enough for me to
Speaker 1: choose to get a tattoo representing the mission of the telescope.
Speaker 1: So here's the story. Back in November, NASA selected a
Speaker 1: group of artists to take part in a big art
Speaker 1: project inspired by the James Webb Space Telescope. Among those
Speaker 1: artists was a tattoo artist from Atlanta named Brandy smart.
Speaker 1: So she pitched an idea she would create eighteen tattoos
Speaker 1: to represent those eighteen mirrored panels for the primary mirror
Speaker 1: of the James Webb Space Telescope. Each tattoo would represent
Speaker 1: something that the James Webb Space Telescope would be looking
Speaker 1: for and She started to search around for people who
Speaker 1: wanted to participate in our project, and I volunteered and
Speaker 1: she took me up on it. So in I went
Speaker 1: to get my space tattoo from Brandy Smart, and I
Speaker 1: chose the image of a proto star. This image was
Speaker 1: actually caught by the Hubble Space Telescope. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: I couldn't pick anything from the James Webb Space Telescope
Speaker 1: because it hadn't launched yet. So I like the idea
Speaker 1: of going with the proto star. That's a body that
Speaker 1: could continue to gain mass and develop and become a
Speaker 1: true star. Or it might not. It might not gather
Speaker 1: enough mass, there might not be enough gas and particles
Speaker 1: and dust for it to gather enough to become a star.
Speaker 1: It could eventually just fizzle out. I feel like that
Speaker 1: speaks to me on a deep personal level. So that's
Speaker 1: what I chose. And we actually shot a video for
Speaker 1: the series I used to host years ago called Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: and in that video I was talking about the James
Speaker 1: Webb Space Telescope as well as showing me getting that
Speaker 1: to The video published in December. At the time, the
Speaker 1: James Web Space Telescope was aiming to launch in but
Speaker 1: clearly that just didn't happen anyway. The video title is
Speaker 1: Staring into Space and it's on the Forward Thinking channel
Speaker 1: f W. Colin Thinking. If you're curious, the full collection
Speaker 1: of Brandy's project is viewable on the website j W
Speaker 1: s T dot nasa dot gov slash content, slash features,
Speaker 1: slash j W st art. Yeah, that's um, that's how
Speaker 1: government websites work. Anyway, Look for Brandy Smart's name if
Speaker 1: you look at that website. My tattoo is in the
Speaker 1: hexagon that's just below the blank center spot in that group.
Speaker 1: So yeah, my skin is part of NASA's history, I guess,
Speaker 1: and it means I feel a special connection with this
Speaker 1: amazing piece of technology, particularly when the ditches and imagined
Speaker 1: to see it get to L two and start capturing
Speaker 1: amazing images. So, like I said, I'll probably do a
Speaker 1: follow up episode where I'll dive into greater detail in
Speaker 1: the technology and instruments of the James Webb Space Telescope,
Speaker 1: how they work and what sort of way they will
Speaker 1: operate in order to bring this kind of information back
Speaker 1: to us and the kind of scientists who study this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But that will have to wait for
Speaker 1: the next episode, or at least a future episode. I
Speaker 1: don't know that it will be the next one, but
Speaker 1: we'll see. And in the meantime, if you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for things I should tackle in episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: let me know. Reach out to me on Twitter. They
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Ye