Humanity's time machine now has a target. Star light star bright, the
first star Webb we'll see is HD 84406 a sun-like star about 260 light years away
with this announcement nasa gave the world the object of the James Webb space telescope's first
peak at the universe's past and it's in the tale of Ursa Major HD 84406 gets the honor of being the
perfect target for web when its 10 billion dollar eye opens and begins to focus its spectacular
golden mirrors the winner has the perfect brilliance will stay in Webb's field of view
long enough for the precise optical alignments and is in a rather desolate region of the greater bear
what's even better HD 84406 can be seen through regular binoculars so we mortals
can share in this historic moment welcome the Factnomenal in today's video we plunge into the
wondrous project that is the James Webb Space Telescope dig into what lies ahead for the next
several months and how this spacecraft will very likely change our understanding of our universe
as the world watched humanity's greatest effort at peering into our cosmic past left home and
trekked roughly a million miles to its celestial parking spot the incredibly complex unfolding of
this gold-plated space origami kept the scientific world and the curious among us holding our breaths
and now it's done this combined effort by nasa the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency
reached its destination in 30 days only after a secretive 16-day trek on a ship with a military
escort from California through the Panama Canal to the ESA spaceport in French Guiana
why secretive and why the military escort to avoid the minuscule but not impossible danger
of piracy of course Webb welcome home with these words nasa administrator bill nelson announced the
James Webb space telescope's arrival at its l2 destination 30 days after its Christmas morning
launch we're one step closer to uncovering the mysteries of the universe and i can't wait to see
Webb's first new views of the universe this summer so what exactly are we looking for baby pictures
the birth of the universe nearly 14 billion years ago is shrouded in mystery yes there
are aspects we've deduced from best evidence but how much do we really know web is set to
change that in a big way by peering back into the time capsule that is deep space to just about the
earliest light possible to see in fact it should detect infrared light from galaxies so far away
that the light has taken almost the entire history of the universe to reach us
very much like a time machine we are trying to build up the story of how the first galaxies
ever emerged and how those evolved into galaxies we see today and we live in today says Dr. Maruska
Bradach of the University of California Davis if you don't get the beginning right it's really
difficult to figure out what the whole evolution looked like and to do that we need a time machine
the guy who lives next to me is always like i have a jacuzzi on my balcony i have a jacuzzi
on my balcony but wait until i tell him i've got a time machine on my balcony getting to
the l2 orbital point is a great accomplishment especially considering the never-before-done
trick of launching a massive telescope that is folded tight only to unfold it in the depths
of space far from human ability to lay on hands and fix a problem not to mention unfurling and
stretching the tennis court sized sunshield's five thin layers without which Webb's delicate
instrumentation becomes space toast faster than you can say is it warm in here yet there's so
much more to come we're just setting the table said Keith Parrish observatory manager at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center after Webb reached its final destination we were just getting on station
getting this beautiful spacecraft unfolded and ready to do science the best is yet to come
even though Webb has reached L2 the point where gravitational forces of the earth and sun
balance with its orbital motion there is still navigation to do
there are tiny periodic adjustments needed to keep Webb properly located in orbit
and a team of scientists will perform a small maneuver every three weeks to keep it on course
that schedule could change as of course nothing like Webb has been maintained at l2 before
and the team will be learning how the spacecraft behaves on the fly at this point when Webb reached
L2 with its incredibly complex unfurling complete undoubtedly there was a collective
sigh of relief among hundreds of scientists engineers designers and instrument builders
but now there's a whole other set of instruments and mechanisms to be fired up and tested
and an incredible amount of fine tuning to be made so guess what it's time for more breath holding
before the beautifully intricate mirror begins adjusting and taking its first blurry images
complex instrumentation will be turned on and operated the first image taken by web will
actually be of a crowded group of stars to make sure that light is getting through the telescope
and into the instruments properly so just the test the image will not be focused as the mirror
fine-tuning will not have been done but nasa will know the process is working then roughly two weeks
after reaching its long-term parking spot the intricate work of adjusting the primary mirror
segments begins with identifying each segment with its image of a star in the camera the mid-infrared
instrument MIRI will also be turned on at this time and with any luck astronomers expect to
be able to take the first science quality images after 90 days yes it will take a while
but with the most incredible mirror ever conceived of by humanity a little patience is a virtue
patience is a good thing right up until you get anxious for something you are eager for
to hurry up and arrive but that is what the scientific world needs for just a few more months
after all nearly three decades of work and 10 billion dollars went into the most powerful
telescope ever created and scientists absolutely want to get it right it starts with a mirror
and what a mirror it is this jewel is covered with slightly more than 48 grams of a microscopically
thin layer of gold to optimize reflection of infrared light so thin that the entire mirror's
gold layer would fill the volume of a marble or five men's wedding rings the mirror spends 21.3
feet or 6.5 meters with 18 hexagonal segments each of which moves in seven angles operated by seven
pistons and actuators all of this must be aligned perfectly to get pictures that we anticipate
but truly cannot imagine until we see them and of course there's the smaller round secondary
mirror that also needs tweaking the process starts by painstakingly aligning each mirror by
centimeters and gets incrementally smaller until the units are less than one ten thousandth a width
of a human hair smaller than a virus the actuators which are 126 tiny motors along for the ride
are moved only one at a time to reduce complexity and ensure safety by focusing on a single movement
in fact it takes about a day to move all 18 segments by a single millimeter
for the record that's slower than watching grass grow much like a photographer takes preliminary
shots to ensure lighting and background are all in order before getting down to serious work Webb
will take several blurry images during setup okay so not the most thrilling part of the
James Webb space telescope's mission but the end goal is so much worth a little patience
right that's a good day to circle on your calendar because it's around this day that
engineers expect the mirrors to be fully aligned it will have been four months from launch before
Webb's marvelous mirror is fully aligned and all instruments focused and for them to work
properly the temperature must drop to negative 388 Fahrenheit infrared background noise is suppressed
at this temperature and that's critical for those baby pictures of the universe we hope to put
into humanity's scrapbook but it's the end of April and the mirror is ready so why does the
web team say we must wait until the end of June at the earliest for actual science to get underway
it's the instrumentation each of the four incredibly complex and intricately linked
instruments on board must be calibrated and tested in each of its many operational modes
this sequence lasts over two months so what do you think about Webb's arrival at L2 and the waiting
game the scientific world must now endure what are you most excited to see revealed by humanity's
time machine tell us in the comments and as always thank you for watching Factnomenal you