Spotlight on first images taken by the James Webb Telescope

​"It's farther than anything humanity has ever looked at before," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. On July 12, the U.S. space agency unveiled the first images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, which will take flight on December 25, 2021.

Today, the spacecraft has reached its final destination: the Lagrange point L2, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. From this point of view and thanks to the best technologies, the space telescope has been able to capture images, giving us for the first time a view, in color and high definition, of the unknown cosmos of 13 billion light years ago.

What happened at the time of the Big Bang? What is the chemical composition of distant stars? What conditions must be met for life to occur? So many questions to which these images will undoubtedly be able to provide some first elements of answers...

Safran Data Systems and Safran Reosc are involved in the incredible James-Webb adventure, providing key equipment for its smooth operation.

Safran Reosc provided a set of mirrors for the NIRSpec instrument to provide spectral mapping of the observed field in the near infrared, while being able to discriminate between nearly 100 different celestial objects. The instrument is thus optimized for the observation of very distant, faint galaxies - that is, close to the origins of our universe.

Finally, Safran Data Systems provided the command and control modems that link the James-Webb to NASA's Deep Space Network control center.

Learn more about Safran's contribution to the James Webb Telescope

To discover all the images captured by the James-Webb telescope, go to the NASA website.