How will Webb be launched?
Webb will be launched on an Ariane 5 ECA rocket. The launch vehicle is part of the European contribution to the mission. Additional information may be obtained here. • Why do we have to go to space at all? Can we not get these data with large telescopes on the ground, using adaptive optics? The Earth’s atmosphere is nearly opaque and glows brightly at most of the infrared wavelengths that Webb will observe, so a cold telescope in space is required. For those wavelengths that are transmitted to the ground, the Earth’s atmosphere blurs the images and causes the stars to twinkle. Currently, adaptive optics systems can correct for this blurring only over small fields of view near bright stars functioning as reference beacons, allowing access to only a small fraction of the sky. Artificial light beacons created with strong lasers may provide better access to the sky, but the technology to provide a wide field of view is still far in the future. Finding the earliest galaxies will require ver
