April 20, 2024

NASA’s Webb Telescope Wins Prestigious Space Foundation Award

Illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: Northrop Grumman
NASAs James Webb Space Telescope team has actually been selected to receive the 2023 John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr., Award for Space Exploration, a leading award from the Space Foundation. This annual award honors an area company, company, or consortium of organizations in the realm of space exploration and discovery.
” The James Webb Space Telescope group represents the finest of our mankind and an enduring pursuit to better comprehend the universes. “Webb is the conclusion of years of persistence and once-unthinkable human resourcefulness made possible by worldwide collaborations.
The award will exist at the Space Foundations yearly opening ceremony of the Space Symposium in Colorado on April 17.

” Within its very first year of operations, the work and discoveries by the James Webb Space Telescope team has opened a totally new chapter of knowledge and inspiration that will permanently alter our lives and history,” stated Space Foundation CEO Tom Zelibor. “This is an unrivaled accomplishment and is changing astronomy and area science while delivering brand-new motivation and creativity to every generation and corner of our world. The collaborations and partnerships in between nations, researchers, industry members, and more have also highlighted the incredible things we can do together as we promote understanding.”
Engineering groups commemorate at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore as the second primary mirror wing of NASAs James Webb Space Telescope unfolds, prior to starting the procedure of latching the mirror wing into location, Saturday, January 8, 2022. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Webb, the worlds premier space science telescope, introduced on December 25, 2021. In 2022, the Webb team effectively completed an intricate series of releases to unfold the observatory into its final configuration in area. They then specifically aligned its mirrors to within nanometers, established and checked its effective instruments, and formally started Webbs objective to explore the infrared universe.
With its optics carrying out nearly two times along with the objective required, Webb is discovering some of the earliest galaxies ever observed, peering through dirty clouds to see stars forming, and providing a more comprehensive view of the atmospheres of worlds outside our planetary system than ever previously. Webb has likewise caught new views of worlds within our solar system, including the clearest look at Neptunes rings in decades. The Swigert award, which commemorates NASA astronaut Jack Swigert for his tradition of area exploration, will acknowledge the contributions of the team members who developed, established, and now run the Webb objective.
” Our vast and devoted team on the James Webb Space Telescope mission is currently bringing us closer and closer to seeing the earliest, most remote galaxies that shine in our universe,” said Sandra Connelly, acting partner administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “Webb is an international cooperation involving a group of countless diverse people that has introduced NASA into a new age of world-class science and is transforming our view of the universes.”
The protostar within the dark cloud L1527, shown in this image from NASAs James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is ingrained within a cloud of material feeding its development. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI).
Current winners of the John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr. Award include NASA and the University of Arizona OSIRIS-REx team, the teams behind the NASA JPL Mars Ingenuity Helicopter and InSight-Mars Cube One, NASA Dawn, and Cassini.
Recently, the Webb missions achievements also have actually been acknowledged by organizations including the National Space Club and Foundation, National Air and Space Museum, Aviation Week, Bloomberg Businessweek, Popular Science, and TIME.
Webb, an international objective led by NASA with its partners ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), is the worlds leading space science observatory. Its style pushed the borders of space telescope capabilities to resolve secrets in our solar system, look beyond to remote worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.
NASA Headquarters in Washington oversees the Webb mission. NASA Goddard manages Webb for the firm and manages work on the objective carried out by the Space Telescope Science Institute, Northrop Grumman, and other objective partners, including Ball Aerospace. In addition to Goddard, numerous NASA centers contributed to the task, including the agencys Johnson Space Center in Houston, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Ames Research Center in Californias Silicon Valley, and others.

” Within its first year of operations, the work and revelations by the James Webb Space Telescope team has opened a totally brand-new chapter of understanding and motivation that will forever change our lives and history,” said Space Foundation CEO Tom Zelibor. The Swigert award, which pays tribute to NASA astronaut Jack Swigert for his tradition of space exploration, will recognize the contributions of the team members who created, established, and now operate the Webb mission.
The protostar within the dark cloud L1527, shown in this image from NASAs James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is embedded within a cloud of product feeding its growth. NASA Goddard manages Webb for the firm and supervises work on the mission carried out by the Space Telescope Science Institute, Northrop Grumman, and other objective partners, including Ball Aerospace. In addition to Goddard, several NASA centers contributed to the job, including the companys Johnson Space Center in Houston, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Ames Research Center in Californias Silicon Valley, and others.