A Major Milestone for the James Webb Space Telescope, a “Mini” Monster Black Hole [Video]

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Northrup Grumman

A major milestone for the James Webb Space Telescope, what astronomers could learn from a “mini” monster black hole, and the latest assessment of our planet’s global surface temperature … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!

Video transcript:

A major milestone for the James Webb Space Telescope, what astronomers could learn from a mini monster black hole, and the latest assessment of our planet’s global surface temperature – a few of the stories to tell you about this week at NASA.

And we have a fully deployed JWST observatory.

[Music]

On January 8th, our James Webb Space Telescope team reached a major mission milestone when it finished deploying the telescope’s 21-foot primary mirror. That successfully completed the final stage of all major spacecraft deployments needed to prepare for science operations.

The next step is to begin moving the 18 primary mirror segments to align the telescope optics – a process that will take months to complete. For more details about the mission visit nasa.gov/webb.

Our Chandra X-ray Observatory has identified a supermassive or monster black hole in the dwarf galaxy MRK 462 that could help astronomers learn more about how the very largest black holes grow.

This is one of the first times that an obscured supermassive black hole has been found in a dwarf galaxy. MRK 462 contains only several hundred million stars by contrast there are a few hundred billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

According to independent analyses done by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, our planet’s global average surface temperature in 2021 tied with 2018 as the sixth warmest on record. This continues a long-term global warming trend during which the past eight years have been the warmest years on record.

Tracking global temperature trends provides a crucial indicator of the impact human activities are having on the climate and quality of life on Earth. Learn more about NASA’s Earth science missions at nasa.gov/earth.

On January 10th, NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced that Dr. Katherine Calvin will serve as the agency’s new chief scientist and senior climate advisor. She replaces former chief scientist Jim Green who recently retired and Gavin Schmidt who was serving as the acting senior climate advisor.

The senior climate advisor position was established to ensure effective fulfillment of the Biden Harris administration’s climate science objectives for the agency.

Also on January 10th, our 10 newest astronaut candidates reported for duty at our Johnson Space Center and were sworn in kicking off their two-year training schedule.

When their training is complete they could be assigned to missions aboard the International Space Station, launches from American soil on spacecraft built by commercial companies, or Artemis missions to the moon with NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket.

As teams continue to prepare our Space Launch System or SLS rocket for this year’s uncrewed artemis one flight test around the moon we and our partners across the country are also making progress building the rocket for Artemis II the first Artemis moon mission with astronauts.

We are also busy manufacturing and testing major parts of rocket hardware for the Artemis 3, 4, and 5 missions. With Artemis, we will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon and establish long-term lunar exploration in preparation for human missions to Mars.

That’s what’s up this week at NASA for more on these and other stories follow us on the web at nasa.gov/twan.

24 Comments on "A Major Milestone for the James Webb Space Telescope, a “Mini” Monster Black Hole [Video]"

  1. I have noticed lately a lot of these headlines with “video”; so where is this video that **is not** a CGI? So misleading.

  2. What would be more accurate in your opinion? ‘Visual aid’? By definition it is video, and the point they are getting across seems reasonable to me – that the article is primarily in video format and the text is simply a transcript of the audio.

    I doubt you would be impressed with ‘real’ video of the headline topics anyway. The best you might get is a false-color image which is arguably still CGI, and more likely the raw images are blurry shapes and specks of light against a backdrop of much brighter lights. Or worse, pure data. Often the images published, like the first image of a black hole circulated widely a few years ago, have literally undergone months of data analysis and intensive image processing just so that the researchers can present a visual that the general public would find meaningful.

    Any interesting information that can be gained from true-color, visible spectrum video has virtually all been explored long ago now during our earliest expeditions into space. It’s awesome that we even have this kind of technology that allows us to visualize things happening on relatively miniscule scales over incredibly far distances – 1 million miles to the JWST and millions of light-years to other galaxies.

  3. Landing first woman on moon sounds great.. however we all have colors.. does that mean previous landers were colorless and pale?

  4. Please email me on new descoveries?

  5. 10s of billions stolen again for this telescope. This project is fake . Even if it is real there is a 0% chance it helps out any human on our planet in any way shape or form. No wonder people dont want to go to work anymore when they have to give up 25% of what they make to taxes and wacth the goverment hand it out to everything but helping counrty or its people

    • Hey YthisSO, Please explain to all of us again exactly why you’re on this planet instead of the person who was supposed to be here. Inquiring minds want to know.

    • So what is about now? Helping the planet or helping Your country?

  6. Wow. It was just deployed and already it’s found a “major milestone”… a “mini black hole”! That’s amazing!

    Oh, wait… that’s just fake info from scitechdaily. Thanks guys.

  7. Oh neat video definitely not click bait… now how do i stop my phone from getting misleading click bait in its notification panel is the next one I’m watching.

  8. I inferred from your headline** that the JWST had discovered a mini monster black hole; something that would be astonishing so early in the mission as Donna, above, noted. Having read the article I see my mistake, but the experience makes me suspicious. I wonder if the headline’s authors intended it as click-bait, whether sensationalism Is standard practice at Scitechdaily, and if so what is the long term readership profile.
    ** A Major Milestone for the James Webb Space Telescope, a “Mini” Monster Black Hole

    • You would not have inferred such an idea had you read the title correctly. The comma separates the two clauses, suggesting that there is more than one article to read in today’s writing. The title doesn’t suggest that the JWST discovered anything. According to Merriam-Webster a “Milestone” is: an important point in the progress or development of something : a very important event or advance. So if you’re going to smash the sentences together with no regard for grammar, you should infer that the JWST developed a black-hole. Now that would certainly be a milestone. However, that would be even more ridiculous than saying it discovered one, so if you’re going to throw out grammer…well you get the point.

  9. Yeah didn’t you send a camera crew up there with it? Where is the selfiecam so we can convince the wackos??

  10. More fake stories where is the detailed video of our own Earth? I would love to be able to see what our own planet looks like from space but yet there is no real pics/ vids of that simple task. So no it’s all just another big rip off of working tax payers.

  11. I think this project of NASA will help us . May be James Web Telescope help us to find mysterious in universe. I’m waiting for the updates related to this telescope. I believe that it would find the life in another planets . In anytime that news we heard that NASA found Aliens. Lets wait for more result ….

  12. Click bait , trash website

  13. Thomas Howington | January 17, 2022 at 7:11 am | Reply

    i would rather see a blip of light amongst the stars and somebody tell me that is jw versus and artist rendition. who are you to tell me what i find visually meaningful about anything. show the craft or don’t

  14. Hard to feel much sympathy for folks in the 25% tax bracket, poor deluded rich babies.

  15. If you doubt there was an individual that didn’t look in the mirror…
    Thank you to the TEAM that accomplished placing a NEW MISSION AMONGST NEW GENERATIONS…
    THE FOUNDER IS PROUD OF YOUR EFFORTS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  16. If you never had a clue…
    Your eyes are wide open NOW.
    HAVING DOUBT IS ANNOYING…
    QUIT JUDGING LIKE THE MONEY IS COMING FROM TAX PAYERS..

    CORPORATION…

  17. Looks like critical race theory is alive and well at NASA.

  18. Is it me, or is grammar just too large an obstacle for doubters to climb over? I don’t have a college degree; hell, I don’t even have a high school diploma! I may not be punctuating this rant correctly! I can barely remember how a comma works, so I checked Merriam-Webster, and Wikipedia, and Indiana University, and Perdue University. (For you doubters, this is what logical people call research.) The title doesn’t claim that the JWST did anything to your blackhole.
    “A major milestone for the James Webb Space Telescope, what astronomers could learn from a “mini” monster black hole, and the latest assessment of our planet’s global surface temperature … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!”
    According to more educated people than me, commas can be used in several ways including, but not limited to, separating items and/or clauses. WOW!!
    So, the title is explaining to the reader that in today’s episode of SCITECHDAILY, we are going to discuss;
    1. A major milestone for the James Webb Space Telescope (The unfolding of it’s mirrors)
    2. what astronomers could learn from a “mini” monster black hole
    3. the latest assessment of our planet’s global surface temperature
    It backs all this up at the end by saying “a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!”
    You’re free to judge my grammar if it helps take your mind off of how ridiculous you sound when you spout off statistics with no supporting evidence and post your silly opinions as if they were facts just because you believe them. My opinion is that most of you doubters came to believe your conspiracy theories because someone just like you, told you it was true. Don’t be a bobble head! Logic, reason, and facts are your friends.

  19. I guess if $10 billion in costs went to American technicians, workers, scientists, etc. in terms of salaries, manufactured products and the like then I guess it is worth it. After all, didn’t Obama give Iran $150 billion in an attempt to bribe them to behave in a civilized manner towards us?

  20. Really? It’s going to take months just for it to align to start taking pictures? Ridiculous

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