While the Hubble Telescope was launched in 1990, having been sent into space via NASA's space shuttle, Hubble only became operational in 1993, after it was found that a minute flaw in the telescope's mirror meant that it would not offer sharp imaging and it would have to be repaired. In the decades that followed, Hubble provided some of the most breathtaking images of the cosmos ever thought possible. Webb's launch in December 2021 was equally precarious. As the official Webb Telescope website notes, the telescope's destination was well beyond the range at which maintenance would be possible, and if there were any faults there would be no way to correct them. However, Webb safely reached its required orbit in January 2022, and began collecting its first images.
Webb differs from Hubble in two significant ways. Per NASA, Webb is designed primarily to observe space phenomena in infrared, allowing the telescope to detect a far greater number of stars and planets than Hubble, which focused primarily on the visible and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum. And whereas Hubble is in orbit at 570 km (354 miles) above the surface of the Earth, Webb is far further out: 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from us, around four times farther than the distance to the moon.
Webb also outperforms Hubble in terms of raw power. "Webb is bigger than Hubble so that it can see fainter galaxies that are further away," said NASA deputy senior project scientist Jonathan Gardner (per The Guardian).
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