NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope team has been selected to receive the 2023 John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr., Award for Space Exploration, a top award from the Space Foundation. This annual award honors a space agency, company, or consortium of organizations in the realm of space exploration and discovery.
“The James Webb Space Telescope team represents the best of our humanity and an enduring pursuit to better understand the cosmos. Every new image is a new discovery,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Webb is the culmination of decades of persistence and once-unthinkable human ingenuity made possible by international partnerships. Together, we are unfolding the universe and inspiring the world.”
The award will be presented at the Space Foundation’s yearly opening ceremony of the Space Symposium in Colorado on April 17.
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Webb, the world’s premier space science telescope, launched Dec. 25, 2021. In 2022, the Webb team successfully completed an intricate series of deployments to unfold the observatory into its final configuration in space. They then precisely aligned its mirrors to within nanometers, set up and tested its powerful instruments, and officially began Webb’s mission to explore the infrared universe.
With its optics performing nearly twice as well as the mission required, Webb is discovering some of the earliest galaxies ever observed, peering through dusty clouds to see stars forming, and delivering a more detailed view of the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system than ever before. Webb has also captured new views of planets within our solar system, including the clearest look at Neptune’s rings in decades. The Swigert award, which pays tribute to NASA astronaut Jack Swigert for his legacy of space exploration, will recognize the contributions of the team members who designed, developed, and now operate the Webb mission.
SOURCE: PRNewswire