A NASA astrophysicist explains humanity’s big new toy

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After 25 years and nearly $10 billion, the James Webb Space Telescope has finally left planet Earth. Billed as a successor to the beloved Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb’s mirror is six times larger and its instruments are tuned to observe longer wavelengths, in order to detect the stretchedout light from primitive galaxies 13.5 billion light years away.

That primary mission — to see the first stars and galaxies that formed after the Big Bang — determined the unusual and challenging design of the telescope. Instead of a shiny tube, the Webb Telescope looks like a giant honeycomb riding on a silver surfboard. The short answer to why it looks like that is: It needs to be very big and very cold.

In the video above, NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn and Vox's Joss Fong build a small model of the telescope to explore its extraordinary design.

Paper model: https://webb.nasa.gov/content/feature...
Unexplainable podcast episodes: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6DDr... https://open.spotify.com/episode/6hot...

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