The James Webb space telescope was successfully launched over the weekend.
There, itll sit in orbit a million miles away from the planet it was built on.
@NASAWebbis safely in space, powered on, and communicating with ground controllers.
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As we learned when Hubble launched with a defect: things dont always go right in space.
If Webb gets on spot and something goes wrong… thats probably how its story will end.
Itll be about six month before we know for sure.
But, so far, everythings looking good according to NASA.
Ooh, sick burn!
The Webb telescope has dozens of major deployments involving micrometer-level precision movements to perform so you can properly function.
If things dont align perfectlythe whole telescope could end up as a $10 billion paperweight floating through space.
But, thats the boring space stuff of yesteryear.
NASA put the best engineers on the project and were just going to have to be happy with that.
We havebillionaires waging their own private space raceand a US military branchdedicated solely to extraterrestrial operations.
Wereblowing up asteroidsand still planninga crewed mission to Marsbefore the decades end.
Things have changed drastically since the space shuttle era.
Take Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk for example.
Together, theyve pushed the boundaries of technology and commerce.
Their empires are so vast that each has extended the reach of their companies beyond the planet itself.
They could build dozens of James Webb space telescopes and still have some change left over.
Musks already done as much with the orbit around Earth.
Scientists say thatone in every 15 points of light in the sky visible from Earth will be artificial soon.
So, the question is, could the James Webb space telescope be hacked?
Just about anything can be hacked.
But, in this case, satellites are notoriously easy to hack.
However, that also works in Webbs favor.
Because the US government is quite aware ofthe potential cybersecurity issues with spacecraftand its heavily-invested in protecting those assets.
Space wars
The entire universe beyond Earths atmosphere is currently up for grabs.
At the end of the day, theres no telling what could go wrong.
The most likely scenario is that Webb arrives safely at its intended orbit and helps humanity explore the cosmos.
But in this new era of political drama, we should be prepared for anything.Even aliens.
