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Why fund the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope?
On Christmas day, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope launched successfully! With the media attention surrounding the recent launch of the telescope, many outside the astrophysics community may have recently heard of this project for the first time. If so, you may have heard stories of the numerous delays, rescheduling and its gradual increase in budget spanning over a decade! It is only natural to question if this project and perhaps others in the future are worth it.
What is the James Webb Space Telescope meant to do? And why was it so expensive?
The James Webb Space Telescope started planning just a few years after the launch of the extremely successful Hubble Space Telescope. It was designed to ‘see’ primarily in infrared light, giving it the capability to observe planets in our Solar System, as well as planets, stars and galaxies much further away than ever before. For astrophysicists, this means the ability to see and understand some of the first stars and galaxies that ever formed in our known universe, a new tool for finding planets that could harbour life outside our Solar System and answer other big questions in astronomy.
