Dmitry Strugovets, head of the Roscosmos press service, noted that 2021 was a breakthrough year for many projects that could not be launched in recent years.
MOSCOW, December 26. /tass/. Dmitry Strugovets, head of the Roscosmos press service, congratulated the specialists of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), who jointly developed the James Webb telescope, on the successful launch of the device. The corresponding message was published by Strugovets on Saturday on his Facebook page.
"Congratulations to everyone on the successful launch of the James Webb space telescope. Apparently, 2021 was a breakthrough year for many projects that could not be launched in recent years. Now it remains for the telescope to successfully reach the L2 point [the second Lagrange point - approx. TASS]. And there he will already be met by our Russian observatory "Spektr-RG", - he wrote.
The telescope was launched into orbit on Saturday using an Ariane 5 launch vehicle. The launch took place from the Kourou cosmodrome in French Guiana. The telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
The telescope, named after James Webb, the head of the Apollo program that allowed a man to visit the Moon, is to replace the Hubble Observatory in orbit. The observatory has a mirror with a diameter of 6.5 m - the largest ever put into orbit. James Webb will study the oldest stars and galaxies in the universe that formed after the Big Bang, as well as search for potentially habitable planets. The estimated life of its operation is 10 years.
