$8B James Webb Telescope Gets Overhauling, Undergoing Series Of Tests

James Webb Telescope, which is considered the world's most expensive telescope, is not working yet on its mission. It is parked now in Greenbelt, Maryland, and will undergo testing in the coming days.

The $8 billion telescope will be sent to NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston to be tested in the vacuum chamber that will simulate the environment of deep space. Then, it will be flown to Los Angeles to be mated with its Sun shield and navigational hardware under the facility run by the project's primary contractor, Northrop Grumman.

Finally, the telescope will be carried down the southwestern coast of North American and in the Panama Canal to French Guiana. Then, it is slated in October 2018 to blast into space atop a European Ariane rocket to pursue its mission in space, according to Orlando Sentinel.

John Mather, a Nobel laureate who is the senior project scientist, had worked in building the telescope together with his team since 1995. He said that this job was so hard and when you are at the beginning, you do not have the imagination to see how hard it is. He further said that no one had appreciated the difficulty of the test program.

Mather added that they are doing what they need to do to make sure that it will work. "You test. And test and test."

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) also referred to as the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) aims to investigate the space. These include observing some of the most distant events and objects in the universe like the formation of the first galaxies. It will also examine the formation of stars and planets including direct imaging of exoplanets. It will also help in revealing potential life in capturing and examining the newly found Trappist-1 exoplanets.