James Webb | Universe Today

Does another Earth exist somewhere in our galaxy? With the recent lauch of the Kepler spacecraft, astronomers are getting closer and closer to finding an Earth-sized planet in an Earth-like orbit. But once that search succeeds, the next questions driving research will be: Is that planet habitable? Does it have an Earth-like atmosphere? Answering those questions will not be easy. But the telescope up for the task is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set for a planned launch in 2013. Two researchers recently examined the ability of JWST to characterize the atmospheres of hypothetical Earth-like planets, and found this is the telescope that would be able to detect certain gases called biomarkers, such as ozone and methane, for close Earth-size worlds. (See our related article: Q&A with Dr. John Mather on JWST.)
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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the much anticipated, long awaited "next generation" telescope. Planned for launch in 2013, JWST has been touted as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. With it, astronomers hope to look back in time to when the universe was just 200 million years old, and see the first stars and galaxies. The lead scientist guiding this project is Dr. John Mather, co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), which measured the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background.

We were understandably honored when Dr. Mather contacted Universe Today, saying he'd like to talk with us about the status of JWST. "I figured it might be time to talk about what we're doing," he said, "because exciting things are starting to happen."
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Early stars that began to form about 200 million years after the Big Bang were strange creatures. From observation, the earliest stars (formed from coalescing primordial gas clouds) were not dense enough to support fusion reactions in their cores. Something within the young suns was counteracting the collapsing gas clouds, preventing the core reactions from taking place. Yet, they still produced light, even in absence of nuclear processes. Could dark matter have had a part to play, fueling the stellar bodies and sparking early stars to life?
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When the James Webb telescope launches in 2013, it'll be the most powerful telescope ever deployed in space. To the get the best view, using the least fuel, it'll sit in a stable orbit about 1.6 million km (1 million miles) from Earth. Unlike Hubble, it was never meant to be repaired. But NASA announced that it's considering installing a grapple attachment anyway, just to be safe.
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