![]() will be kept nearly as dark and as cold as outer space, to insure that distant signals aren’t washed out. These sheets, each thinner than notebook paper, will function as a gigantic parasol, protecting the body of the telescope from the light and the heat of the sun, moon, and Earth. On its way, the telescope will slowly unfurl five silvery winglike layered sheets of Kapton foil, about as large as a tennis court. From Earth, it will appear ten thousand times fainter than the faintest star. will then continue on its own, for twenty-nine days, toward a lonely, lovely orbit in space, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, where we will never visit it, though it will stay in constant communication with us. Ariane 5 will carry the telescope some ten thousand kilometres in thirty minutes. The telescope will be put into Ariane 5, a European rocket named for a mythical princess who helped a man she loved defeat the Minotaur and escape a maze. It could have flown, sure, but it’s a tight squeeze-plus the telescope weighs seven tons, and Kourou’s airfield is connected to its spaceport by seven bridges not built to endure such a load. Thousands of scientists and engineers from fourteen countries will have worked on it. The telescope will have been twenty-five years and ten billion dollars in the making. Next month, the James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to take a slow boat from Los Angeles, spend a few days traversing the Panama Canal, and arrive at a spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
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