It’s among the most powerful scientific instruments ever built.
The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched on Dec. 25 on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, is destined for a point a million miles from 地球 where it will unfurl gold-plated mirrors and begin 足球外围官网登录ing the heavens for secrets long kept from humanity.
它的名字来自于 北卡罗来纳大学教育学院 -詹姆斯E. 韦伯的28 (.B.Ed.).
“James Webb was the guy 谁 gave us the wherewithal and the courage to actually explore beyond this rock,肖恩·奥基夫说, 谁是2002年的NASA局长, 选择了以韦伯的名字命名望远镜. “He, at a formative phase and a very dramatic phase, with a mission to the moon as his mandate, established NASA for its extraordinary exploration prowess. He was instrumental in that leadership role.”
詹姆斯·韦伯(James Webb)是美国宇航局(NASA)科学任务的早期支持者，包括那些基于太空的天文学任务. Amid the race-to-the-moon programs of Mercury, 双子座和阿波罗, Webb as early as 1965 advocated for putting a telescope in orbit above the fuzzying effects of 地球’s atmosphere, enabling it to see clearly far into space. That idea became the Hubble Space Telescope, an instrument that for 30 years has captured and delivered into laboratories and living rooms stunning star-studded images from space.
如果一切按计划进行, the James Webb Space Telescope will engage a combination of mirrors, 相机和电脑使其比哈勃望远镜强大100倍. It will see to just shy of the very edge of the known universe.
因为它将能够从惊人的距离观看古代的光, the Webb Telescope will serve as a cosmic time machine. It will capture baby pictures of infant galaxies as they were being born billions of years ago — before the formation of our home, 地球. 通过分析穿过环绕其他恒星的行星大气层的光, the Webb Telescope might discover chemical signatures that for the first time show life has existed somewhere other than here.
James Webb is the man 谁 helped make it possible.
詹姆斯·韦伯出生于1906年, 四个月前，莱特兄弟获得了世界上第一架动力飞机的专利. Webb’s career would put him into roles from which he helped push the U.S. to the leadership position of a modernizing — and spacefaring — world.
在路上, 通过勇气和运气, Webb worked in business and in government, becoming a fixture in the halls of power in Washington, D.C.他在几个办公室和机构担任领导职务，并直接为美国的三个机构服务.S. 总统.
Webb came out of deep rural Granville County, the son of a school superintendent (also a Carolina graduate).
因为负担不起学费，他从最正规外围足球网站辍学一年之后, Webb learned how to take shorthand and to type, 这些技能是他在返回教堂山时为完成大学学业而使用的. 1928年毕业时，他获得了教育学学士学位，并获得了美国大学优等生荣誉学会(Phi Beta Kappa)的优等生证书.
之后，他为学院院长工作, 纳撒尼尔·沃克, 在教育研究局担任了一年的业务经理, 创建了, distributed and scored tests taken by high school students across the state to determine their readiness for college. 北最正规外围足球网站 was one of the first states to give a comprehensive test to all graduating high school students — at the dawn of high-stakes standardized student testing.
He made his way out of Depression-busted 北最正规外围足球网站 by applying for and winning in 1930 a slot to join a small, newly formed reserve aviation unit of the U.S. 海军陆战队. 这是他对飞行器、驾驶飞行器的人和制造飞行器的人的介绍.
The next decade would see Webb in a succession of 20th-century jobs that would seemingly singularly prepare him for building and leading what would become a 21st-century space agency.
While serving as a reservist in the 海军陆战队, 周末飞到匡蒂科, 维吉尼亚州, 韦伯在政府部门找到了他的第一份工作, serving as secretary to 北最正规外围足球网站 congressman Edward Pou. Pou was chairman of the House Rules Committee, serving in that gate-keeping role during President Franklin D. 罗斯福执政的头100天以及匆忙通过的大量新政立法.
Pou做了交易, including at poker games every afternoon at 4 o’clock, 韦伯处决了他们两年, 让韦伯在华盛顿的幕后工作中接受了博士级别的教育.
Webb next worked as an assistant to former 北最正规外围足球网站 Gov. O. Max Gardner在Gardner的华盛顿律师事务所工作，他完成了自己的培训，成为一名律师. 韦伯帮助加德纳通过谈判解决了一桩涉及政府空邮合同的丑闻, giving Webb experience balancing the interests of government agencies and multiple aviation industry firms.
As the nation prepped for war in the late 1930s, 航空工业公司之一, 斯佩里陀螺仪公司, 聘请了韦伯, 谁, 超过八年, 在管理公司从800名员工发展到33名员工的过程中，他成为了公司的副总裁,该公司生产陀螺仪, 导航设备, bomb sights and other gear for fighting World War II. 在战争后期, 韦伯要求加入海军陆战队的现役，并被指派在切里波因特领导一个单位, 北最正规外围足球网站, that produced portable radar equipment bound for use in the island-hopping warfare of the Pacific theater. 这些工作让韦伯获得了成长和管理大型技术团队的经验, 生死攸关的目标.
战争结束后, Webb was called back to Washington to serve President Harry Truman as director of the Bureau of the Budget, the predecessor of today’s Office of Management and Budget. One of Webb’s initiatives aimed at better understanding the country’s needs and capabilities in a modernizing world: He instructed all government departments and agencies to report to him the amounts of money they were spending on re足球外围官网登录 and development work. The resulting report was used to help make the case for creating a body that would help prioritize and guide government investments in scientific re足球外围官网登录 — the National Science Foundation.
杜鲁门将韦伯提拔为总统候选人. 在国务院的两个职位, 在朝鲜战争爆发期间，他担任这个职位.S. 美国政府为应对与苏联的冷战而组织起来.
Webb’s tenure at the State Department has generated criticism today from people pointing to the government’s purging of gay and lesbian employees, 包括韦伯在国务院的时候以及后来在NASA的时候, 在被称为“薰衣草恐慌”的麦卡锡时代的迫害运动中.一群天文学家发起了一场请愿运动，要求重新命名韦伯望远镜, 说韦伯要么参与了清洗行动，要么就应该知道该阻止他们. A NASA investigation into available documents concluded in September that there was not enough evidence of Webb’s involvement to justify renaming the telescope.
1957年，苏联发射了第一颗人造卫星“斯普特尼克”.S. 奋力追赶，并找到一种方式来证明民主是可以竞争的, 和超越, 苏联在太空的成就.
He was named NASA administrator in 1961 by President John F. 肯尼迪, 谁 told Webb he needed not a scientist to lead the space agency, but someone 谁 knew how to get things done in Washington. 14周后, 在对国会的演讲中, 肯尼迪 called for landing men on the moon by the end of the decade.
韦伯因管理NASA的努力和其大胆目标而广受赞誉. A student of management theories and a proponent of professionalizing government management (he established the National Academy of Public Administration in 1967), Webb organized and managed the race to the moon. 在美元, it would become the largest engineering project in history, 比制造第一颗原子弹的曼哈顿计划大十倍. 在人员数量上，它可与美国参与越南战争相媲美.
Webb was admired within NASA for his leadership through crisis after the 1967 Apollo 1 launchpad fire that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, 艾德·怀特和罗杰·查菲. Webb shouldered responsibility — in repeated grilling by congressional committees — and promised a full investigation, 最正规外围足球网站并解决了导致事故的技术和管理问题.
肖恩·奥基夫, 谁是2003年哥伦比亚号航天飞机在重返大气层时解体的NASA局长, 机上七人全部遇难, said he was guided by how Webb handled the Apollo 1 disaster.
“要不是我对他的那段历史和他在其中的角色那么熟悉的话, 我不知道我能不能像以前那样处理哥伦比亚悲剧,”奥基夫说. “我当时想，‘我要从这本书中找到一页，然后直接照着去做.’”
Throughout the construction of the Apollo moon program, Webb often worked to stay out of the news, 提出了宇航员, scientists and other administrators to be in front of the cameras. In a pre-internet age when many Americans got their news from newspapers and weekly news magazines such as “Life,” Webb never appeared on a magazine cover during the race to the moon.
从舞台灯光之外, he worked to build a national infrastructure to support the development of scientists and engineers across a range of disciplines. 他把, 和资助, 大学应采用多学科方法来解决大型研究问题. 他是大学-企业-政府研究伙伴关系的倡导者. 这两个都是今天的标准.
As a graduate of a public university in the South, 他知道有了支持, colleges and universities outside of the Ivy League could make major contributions to the nation’s scientific and technological progress. 通过NASA的他的政府, he targeted millions of dollars of funding for science programs at universities throughout the country, 包括历史上的黑人, with grants to support graduate students. 在他努力的巅峰, NASA was the nation’s largest funder of graduate student aid, 超过4个,000 doctoral graduates benefiting from the funding.
虽然他自己不是科学家, 韦布走遍了全国, frequently articulating a vision in which science, particularly the discoveries emerging from the space program, 能建立美国的国家威望吗. 它还将, 他说, 激发年轻人, motivating many of them to pursue careers in mathematics, 工程与科学.
James Webb would leave NASA in late 1968, 辞职，让下一任总统选择自己的行政长官. 几个月后, Webb would watch Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong step onto the moon as most Americans did — on television at home.
Webb went on to serve on a variety of advisory and corporate boards and for 12 years as a member of the governing board of the Smithsonian Institution. 他于1992年去世，享年85岁，安葬在阿灵顿国家公墓.
Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, 北卡罗来纳大学教育学院院长, said Webb’s life not only bridged a period in which the U.S. boldly moved into leadership of a technocratic age, 但这是韦伯的功劳, 通过展示组织不同学科的力量来面对一个共同的, 具有挑战性的问题.
“在很多方面, 詹姆斯·韦伯是他那个时代的人, 他不仅能看到取得伟大成就的可能性, 还有到达目的地的方法, ways to manage and motivate people to reach for incredible goals,”Abd-El-Khalick说. “His accomplishments helped popularize the aspirations of science, 为此，我们感谢他.”
在1964年的剪彩演讲中, Webb talked about the need for the public to understand that the work of science is not separated “by some mystique from our humanitarian traditions.”
它对人们很重要, 他说, “要明白科学的世界是一个知识积累的世界, 不是一个魔法或神秘的世界. 他们会看到有多慢, painstakingly the scientists unveil knowledge that has not been disclosed by the inquiries of the past; that science is a 足球外围官网登录 for truth, and that so are philosophy and history and poetry.”
The Webb Space Telescope is bound for flying beyond the moon, to a station-keeping point where it will unfold its mirrors, 指向远方, and begin six months of calibrating its cameras and instruments. NASA and its scientific partners already have plans for which objects will be targeted for the first public photos to be released in the second half of 2022 — but for now, 这是一个秘密.