James Webb Space Telescope: Try our tricky quiz about Nasa's super-powerful telescope
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The JWST is set to be the biggest telescope sent into space... so far.
It has been years in the making but the team working on Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope are carrying out the final preparations before it launches into orbit in around six weeks' time.
Engineers around the world, including a team from the UK, have been working on the JWST, which will be able to look back in time to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang - (which was thought to have happened more than 13.5 billion years ago).
It is expected to transform the way we explore space, so what is it?
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a super-powerful version of other space telescopes like the Hubble.
It's a mirror made of 18 segments specially designed to capture infrared light from the first galaxies that formed in the early universe.
It will also be able to see stars and planets being discovered beyond our solar system and learn more about how they were made.
The JWST will be launched into orbit on an Ariane rocket from French Guiana in South America in December.
The telescope will start life in space in a tube, but will "unfold" like origami in reverse, according to Nasa.
The planning of the launch is a meticulous operation as the telescope will have to be "folded" neatly into a rocket, and "unfolded" whilst it zooms around the Earth.
If all goes to plan, the telescope is basically a big mirror bounces light from space back into special instruments that can identify objects millions of light years away.
But how much do you know about this ground-breaking piece of kit?
Don't worry if the answer is "not that much!" Try this quiz and you may learn something along the way...
If you cannot see the quiz, click here.
- Published14 April 2019
- Published19 September 2018
