The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Building on the inspiring and poetic 1996 HST and Beyond report of the Dressler committee, and with the vigorous support of NASA, ESA, and CSA leadership, the JWST team settled on the four top scientific priorities, documented the instrument and telescope performance requirements to meet scientific objectives, made plans, matured 10 technologies, made international agreements, and chose the instrument teams and contractors. The result is the world’s most powerful space telescope, performing better than expectations, with a projected lifetime of 20 years. We have reviewed the history, key technical choices, and we celebrate the people who made the observatory real.

We already see progress in the four key science themes. JWST has begun to address questions of the first galaxies and reionization by measuring spectroscopic redshifts of metal-poor galaxies beyond z>13, detecting multiple emission lines in a galaxy at z=10.6, and measuring galaxy luminosity functions at z>7. JWST has studied galaxy assembly by detecting galaxy bars at z>1 and examining the quasar-galaxy connection at z=2.94. JWST has peered into star-forming regions to study the interactions between massive stars and the surrounding material and measured the ice chemistry in a prestellar cloud. JWST has measured the temperature of a rocky exoplanet, and made the first detection of CO2 in an exoplanet atmosphere. JWST observed the impact of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) into asteroid Dimorphos and has made a detailed study of the Jovian system. Further JWST observations will continue to address the original science themes, and it is likely that the universe will surprise us with unexpected discoveries. Looking toward the future, our international teams have proven that extremely complex scientific space missions can be successful, paving the way towards the future great observatories recommended by the 2020 Decadal Survey.