Session AR01: Review: The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

The James Webb Space Telescope was launched on Dec. 25, 2021, and commissioning was completed in early July 2022. With its 6.5 m golden eye, and cameras and spectrometers covering 0.6 to 28 µm, Webb is already producing magnificent images of galaxies, active galactic nuclei, star-forming regions, and planets. Scientists are hunting for some of the first objects that formed after the Big Bang, the first black holes (primordial or formed in galaxies), and beginning to observe the growth of galaxies, the formation of stars and planetary systems, individual exoplanets through coronography and transit spectroscopy, and all objects in the Solar System from Mars on out. Except for small planets, asteroids, comets, and dust grains, all targets are plasmas, with temperatures ranging from a few K to millions of K. Plasma processes control the growth of stars, planets, and black holes, and the release of rotational energy through jets from protostars and active galactic nuclei (accreting black holes). I will show how we built the Webb and what we have learned so far. The greatest surprise, still not explained, is that the first galaxies grew faster, hotter, larger, brighter, and more massive than we had predicted. Webb is a joint project of NASA with the European and Canadian space agencies.