What's next for the James Webb Space Telescope?

According to reports, the space survey capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope are now known, and astronomers around the world are looking forward to the data collected by the telescope, which will lead to major discoveries through careful study.

Launched in December 2021 at a cost of $10 billion, the James Webb Space Telescope is NASA's largest and most surveying space science telescope. data collection in different modes. Using these sophisticated sensors, the telescope is not limited to studying objects in the solar system, but also observes the first stars and galaxies that were born in the early universe.

On July 12, NASA held a live event at Goddard Space Flight Center to release the first scientific analysis images from the James Webb Space Telescope. It is the result of years of scientific research, and the telescope project experts say this revolutionary telescope will lead to breakthrough space discoveries.

Klaus Pontoppidan, the project lead scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), said: "The first year of scientific surveys has begun, and we have provided scientists with important observational data images, and with the telescope project Moving forward, making this data available to the public will be the key to unlocking new discoveries, which will be publicly released through project reviewers in the coming days, and we are accelerating our progress.

Pontopidan emphasized that the early science plans for the James Webb Space Telescope were based on survey efficiency so that the telescope would not have to spend a lot of time moving from one target to another. The key right now is to make sure more data is available from all instruments and all modalities, that covers a wide range of science, that is immediately public, and that there are no exclusive interview periods because we want scientists to have as much valuable data as possible, especially when scientists can ask The Telescope Project Study Group makes survey recommendations.

It is very important for scientists to make survey proposals. During the service life of the James Webb Space Telescope, the project research team will invite scientists to submit proposals every year, such as which observatories they want to use and which celestial bodies to survey and analyze. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, which manages the James Webb Space Telescope, will select some of the science programs to plan the annual observations, known as a survey cycle.

In a news conference, Eric Smith, chief scientist of NASA's astrophysics division, talked about the first year of the mission's survey results, saying: "Anything we plan for the first survey cycle is a Bold, but not groundbreaking. The second survey cycle, due to begin in summer 2023, is expected to lead to some surprising discoveries as the James Webb Space Telescope captures high-quality data images."

"We are now opening several new chapters in space exploration, such as exoplanet atmospheres, exoplanet atmospheres, In the early days of the universe, the formation of clouds, almost everything people can say. We didn't even know what we were going to find, and it was the most exciting!

Even though these data are only preliminary survey results, they are already of high scientific value, Jane Rigby, operations program scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a news release that the telescope has collected about 40 terabytes of data, which were released in raw form on July 14, and additional server space allocated by NASA to handle the traffic generated by downloading the new data.

Rigby stressed that while these survey data are exciting, the real work to be done is to develop new models to analyze them, and I just want to say that this is just the beginning! These data show that the James Webb Space Telescope is effective, but the scientific survey results require extended analytical studies, one can use different techniques to get as much scientific discovery from the data as possible.

So far, astronomers have demonstrated the true survey capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope, and there may be more challenging or impressive survey targets in the future, Smith said during the meeting, referring to scientists who could choose from more can also go deeper than they thought possible, and I think scientists will be more exploratory in the second survey cycle because they now know that the telescope is very powerful.