JWST Launch Event

It was only a century ago that Edwin Hubble discovered our Milky Way galaxy is not alone. There are as many galaxies in the observable universe as there are stars in the Milky Way: hundreds of billions, each with hundreds of billions of stars and more planets than stars. The satellite named in his honor returned stunning images that peered deep into space, and into our past. Now we are on the brink of a new era, the next generation, the James Webb Space Telescope.

This new epoch in space exploration was made possible by the stunning engineering achievements of the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb is the most complex telescope ever built and the largest ever to be sent into space. From its 21.3 feet-wide mirror designed to fold into an Ariane 5 rocket and then unfurl and calibrate itself mid-flight, to its 5-layered sunshield the size of a tennis court built to sustain meteor strikes while keeping Webb’s instruments cold and operational, the James Webb Space Telescope is an engineering marvel. Most incredibly, Webb has already overcome 295 single points of failure on its million-mile journey to its destination where it now orbits the sun, readying itself for scientific observation.

To celebrate the successful launch of the JWST, Kari worked with PW’s science team to curate this event, book the guests, research and script the conversation, and produce it.