About half an hour after the revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope was launched into the universe later this month-if all goes as expected-scientists in Baltimore will take over forever.

From the mission operations center in Wyman Park adjacent to Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus, they will carefully guide the spacecraft to a point 1 million miles from the earth, calibrate its instruments and align its 18 hexagonal mirrors, These mirrors must work together to capture what has not been seen so far.

The Baltimore Space Telescope Science Institute is the center of a once-in-a-century observatory, and it is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. It can observe space more deeply-so it can be traced back to farther time.

Weber will look back at distant stars and galaxies 13.5 billion years ago-some of which were first formed after the Big Bang. As a powerful infrared telescope, Webb will be able to see a lot of things, while the Hubble telescope mainly sees visible light and ultraviolet light, and cannot see it at all. It will stare at dust clouds that Hubble can’t penetrate, and focus on celestial bodies that Hubble can’t reach, all to answer some of the most annoying questions in the universe, from how galaxies form to planets orbiting distant stars. What constitutes it.

The Space Telescope Scientific Research Institute has extensive experience in this area. After Hubble launched in April 1990, officials there dealt with its scientific operations, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center-a short trip on Interstate 95 in Greenbelt- —Monitoring this spaceship. But this time, the institute did both.

"A lot of people don't know the Space Telescope Science Institute," said Nancy Levinson, its deputy director. "They don't even know that we have been playing the role of the Hubble Telescope for decades. Therefore, we hope to take everyone on this exciting journey together."

Over the years, the $9.7 billion telescope project, named after one of NASA’s early leaders, made headlines due to delays. The telescope was fully assembled in 2016, nearly 30 years after the Baltimore Institute hosted the Next Generation Space Telescope Symposium (Webb’s virtual birthplace). But as scientists tested the observatory, problems began to appear: paper-thin sunshields were torn, thruster valves leaked, and improperly installed nuts and bolts fell off the components.

All this led to a recent setback when a broken clip pushed the observatory as technicians were working to connect it to the launch vehicle adapter in French Guiana in South America. This advances the earliest possible launch date by a few days. But the scientists of the institute are optimistic that this time, Weber will fly into the sky.

The institute’s team brings together fresh graduates and old astronomy experts. A new team including partners such as Northrop Grumman and the European Space Agency will prepare the Webb telescope discoveries in Baltimore-so many that they have built additional ones outside of the Institute’s mission control The office is located in the Steven Mueller Building at Hopkins University.

Through a pair of glass doors, the NASA logo on the dark blue wall comes into view. There is a small Weber model in the corner. Passing through the hall is the mission operation center, which contains a dazzling series of computer screens and radio-like devices through which technicians can listen to specific conversations without having to get up and walk through the room.

"The mission operation center of the space telescope is the brain of the entire operation," said Sylvain Veilleux, a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Maryland. He will use the telescope to study distant quasars-luminous galactic objects that may be supermassive black holes.

Baltimore technicians will watch live footage of the long-awaited launch, which may take place as early as Christmas Eve. But when it rises, their eyes will be fixed on the large computer screen, and data about the functions of the observatory will flood in quickly.

According to its fuel reserves, the mission of this telescope will last at least five and a half years. Once in space, astronauts will not be able to repair it.

Cameras that are not trained on Webb, at least in terms of visual light perception. Scientists believe that the increase may jeopardize an already delicate task—and increase its cost. Instead, telescope technicians must rely entirely on the data they receive from space. At a place four times farther than the moon, Weber will-in a sense-be invisible. It is possible that it will never be seen by human eyes again.

However, the details of its return to Earth are expected to be worth seeing. Astronomers all over the world are excited collectively.

But first, it must get there.

In order to be installed in the nose of the European Ariane 5 rocket, the telescope must be folded into a pillar. Therefore, after being separated from the launch vehicle approximately 26 minutes after lift-off, the telescope will begin to unfold and begin a six-month commissioning period.

First, the five solar panels of the observatory will unfold like an accordion. The 20-foot-long array will use the sun's rays to power Weber's scientific instruments, propulsion systems, and communications technology. The mission’s operations controller, Jessica Hart, stated that its release is one of several steps that the telescope will complete automatically, but the remaining steps will begin on Earth—more specifically, Baltimore.

Hart was one of the staff who had undergone rigorous rehearsal and faced a lot of simulation errors, thrown out like quick quizzes. Shortly before the launch, the team will begin a 12-hour shift in preparation for monitoring Webb around the clock.

"This is my first job after graduating from college-actually me and a few people on the control team," Hart said. "So we are very excited, and we feel very honored to be involved in a mission as big as James Webb."

Hart joined the institute about three years ago after graduating from the University of Illinois with a degree in aerospace engineering. Her job is to gather information from various teams monitoring different parts of Weber so that commands can be sent to the spacecraft.

This includes a maneuver called mid-section correction, during which Weber’s thrusters will correct the aircraft’s trajectory to a point called L2-a "sweet spot" in the orbit, at which Weber will hover due to the balance force. . In that position, the telescope does not have to pass through the shadow of the earth, which means it can observe throughout the year.

After the first two course corrections, the scientists will begin to deploy the five-layer sunshade of the aircraft, which will shield the telescope’s thermal instruments, allowing them to observe very far objects under infrared light.

Next are the most important mirrors, which will begin to unfold about 10 days after launch.

In two weeks, Weber will go to L2. Then in about five months, as scientists adjust the alignment of each ultra-lightweight mirror on the spacecraft, the telescopes will cool down so that they can work as a whole.

Klaus Pontoppidan, a Weber project scientist at the institute, said: “It can see objects that are 100 times dimmer than previously possible — stars, galaxies.” “That’s enough, we really It is impossible to predict what we will see. So we will have this fire hose data. I think people will scramble to analyze all this."

These included Veilleux and Néstor Espinoza, who was an assistant astronomer at the institute, and he was one of the first scientists explored by Weber. He will be part of a team that uses Weber’s infrared technology to determine what constitutes the atmosphere of the hot exoplanet K2-141b, a “super-Earth” whose size is 1.5 times the size of our Earth. Hundreds of light years away from us. Scientists discovered the planet in 2018, but using existing technology, they can only determine its size-and guess its composition.

Espinosa said that astronomers thought the planet was so hot — the temperature climbed above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit — that its atmosphere might have actually been blown away. If anything, it's probably completely unfamiliar. Maybe it will be made of sodium or evaporated metal. But if it is not there, Espinosa and his team may have the opportunity to observe the surface of this planet, which may be more key to understanding the diversity of the distant world.

For Espinosa, who grew up in Santiago, Chile, this task was "a dream come true."

"As far as I'm concerned—where I grew up—I never thought you could become a professional scientist until when I was 17 years old, my physics teacher told me:'You know you can do it professionally At this point, right?'" he said.

After completing his studies in Chile and Germany, Espinosa was appointed as an assistant astronomer at the Institute. Now he will be at the forefront of some of Weber's earliest missions, preparing for the discovery of the Milky Way.

"Nothing is like we have seen before," Espinosa said. "So, this is a beautiful Pandora's Box."