In the night sky, star gazing had amazed most of us during our childhood. Looking beyond our Solar system was always thrilling and exciting. In recent times, there are few advanced Science missions which are the world’s most significant technological marvels.

Glimpses of few such advanced Science missions that took place are highlight here for the readers.  

James Web Space Telescopes:

The James Web Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful space telescope ever built by NASA. It is famous as JWST and the telescope is equipped with very sensitive infrared cameras to see through dust in our universe which is invisible to the human eyes. The JWST telescope is as tall as a 3-story building and as long as a tennis court. It is so huge that it has to fold origami-style to fit inside the rocket to launch.  This telescope promises to reshape our understanding of the dawn of the universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched on December 25, 2021. This telescope orbits around the sun at L2 Point (Second Lagrange Point) which is 1.5 million KM from Earth and Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) is maintained at extremely low temperature of just 7 kelvins (-266 Celsius, -447 Fahrenheit).

Mission Objective:  The key objective of the JSWST mission is to solve mysteries in our solar system and to look beyond distant galaxies. The telescope will be able to capture images of some of the first galaxies ever formed. It will also be able to observe objects in our solar system from Mars outward and looks inside dust clouds to see where new stars and planets are forming, examining the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars.

Interesting discoveries by JWST till date:

• Discovery Star formation region at the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula. This appears as tiny red dots against the smoky backdrop of the pillars. These collections of dust and gas, each many times larger than our solar system are where new stars are born. 

• JSWST Able to Capture Direct image of an Exponent Planet. The planet, called HIP 65426 b, was discovered in 2017. This HIP65426b is a colossal gas giant and it’s also exceptionally large ⁠— about 12 times the size of Plant Jupiter. 

• Webb captured an image of a distant star, called a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 140) which has a ripple like pattern of concentric rings which looks unreal.

• JSWT to able to find the most distant galaxies. Few of the galaxies appeared in about 13.4 billion years ago when the universe was only 350 million years old which is about 2% of its current age. This truly makes us looking back at time.

• Looking at an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere in details. JWST is able to locate planet orbiting a star in the constellation Virgo. This exoplanet plant is now the most-explored world outside our solar system. The planet is called WASP-39b and is about 700 light years from Earth. Webb was able to identify individual chemicals in the strange atmosphere of the exoplanet, such as water, methane, carbon dioxide, and potassium, among others. 

• JSWST discovers Brown young DWARF with Sand Clouds. This VHS1256 b is not a planet but a small brown dwarf which gives off a dim, reddish glow which has sandy & Silicate clouds –a first for this kind of object

DART Mission:

DART stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test. All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet Earth from any impact of celestial object.  DART mission is a step towards preparing the world for a potential future asteroid strike like the one which killed dinosaurs some 66 million years ago.

Johns Hopkins Applied a Physics Laboratory which has built and operated the DART spacecraft and manages the DART mission for NASA's Planetary Defence.

Mission Objective:  The mission objective is purposely changing the motion of a celestial object and is the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology. This is the first of kind for such a mission in the human history.  

Mission Outcome:   DART Spacecraft was sent towards target asteroid Didymos which was 6.8 million miles from Earth during this mission.  It took about 11.55 hours to orbit its larger parent asteroid Didymos prior to DART impact on 26th September,2022. DART’s intentional collision and NASA’s investigation team had confirmed the spacecraft’s impact that altered Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos by 32 minutes, shortening the 11 hour and 55-minute orbit to 11 hours and 23 minutes.

Many tons of asteroidal rocks were displaced and launched into space by the impact. The recoil from this blast of debris substantially enhanced DART’s push against Dimorphos which is similar to a jet of air streaming out of a balloon which sends the balloon in the opposite direction.

This mission results in one important step towards the understanding of the full effect of DART’s impact with its target asteroid”

Hayabusa 2 Mission:

Hayabusa 2 Spacecraft was built and operated by JAXA which is a Japanese spacecraft and was sent to Asteroid Ryugu for exploration.

Mission Objective:  The mission objective is to explore asteroid Ryugu (C-type asteroid) and collect necessary samples beneath Ryugu’s surface and is sent back to Earth for analysis.

Mission Outcome:  In December 2014, Hayabusa2 spacecraft was launched by JAXA and it reached Ryugu in June,2018. This spacecraft deployed two rovers and a small lander on the surface of Ryugu.

In Feb,2019, Hayabusa2 fired an impactor into the asteroid to create an artificial crater which allowed the spacecraft to retrieve a sample from Ryugu’s surface. In December, 2020, It successfully delivered the asteroid sample back to Earth through landing Capsule.

According to JAXA, the outcome of the mission will allow a unified understanding of various primitive bodies, revealing of components and construction of the whole solar system, and elucidation of the mystery behind its origin and evolution. This successive sequence is directed to the more distant and more primitive bodies from the scientific view with more sophisticated technologies.

All these significant Science missions had a number of Indian Scientists had also contributed. We should sincerely thank and appreciate all the scientists who has contributed for the greater good of scientific research and helped in advancing technology.