I can’t stop following the Webb Telescope.
Is it me, or are we as a collective society not making a big enough deal about it?
Just before the end of 2021, a year that saw the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as numerous natural disasters, NASA launched the most powerful telescope in history into space. Over the next month, the Webb Telescope will unfold and reshape itself into an instrument that will potentially be able to explore the most observable distant galaxies in the early universe. It will begin detecting planets and gases and sending back images, according to NASA, by the summer of 2022.
As the Washington Post’s editorial board wrote in a recent opinion piece, “Now we may finally learn just how we ended up here, in 2022, nearly 13.8 billion years after the big bang.”
The audacity is astounding, especially considering it’s been less than 120 years since the Wright Brothers flew a 600-pound “airplane” into the sky that could travel no faster than 30 miles per hour.
To me, during what has been a particularly stifling period of our existence in so many ways, the telescope is a reminder of what’s possible.
As journalists and storytellers, what’s possible can be easy to forget, particularly in a lane that is currently losing much of its workforce.