This video is supported by Brilliant. On Christmas day 2021, the James Webb telescope
finally launched on its long journey to explore our Universe. After years of delays and billions of dollars
spent, the telescope was now on its way to lagrange point 2, an area in space 1.5 million
km away from Earth. The telescope took 30 days to get there, but
before James Webb ever left the ground, it went through a journey that was perhaps even
more extraordinary. The story of James Webb is pretty crazy. In fact, it’s almost a miracle that the
telescope ever made it into space at all. Development of the telescope began all the
way back in 1996 - and the launch was expected to take place in 2007. Between then and its eventual launch in 2021,
the telescope went through a major redesign in 2005, suffered a ripped sunshield, almost
got canceled by the US congress and even survived the COVID pandemic. All of this meant that the budget went from
500 million dollars to 10 billion dollars, by the time it was complete. Because of this, NASA now had the world's
most precious and valuable object in its hands, and it had to be sent 9,000km around the world
to the launch site. But before NASA even considered how it would
traverse this complicated route, it had to find a way to package this rather valuable
object. Cardboard box technology had improved greatly
over the last decade, but Webb needed something a little stronger. And so NASA built a custom shipping container
called Stars, which would protect the telescope during its journey and act as a mobile clean
room. The instruments on Webb are so sensitive that
even a speck of dust or a fingerprint could cause serious damage to them. This container was so clean that no more than
100 particles - much smaller than the width of a human hair - could be present inside
the container. Each nut and bolt on the container was inspected
with ultraviolet light to reveal any unwanted contaminants. Only once it was perfectly clean could Webb
be loaded into the container. This process took nearly a month, as the telescope
had to be carefully folded into its launch configuration like a giant piece of origami. But before James Webb was even assembled,
the telescope's mirror also had to go through a crazy journey. The 18 giant hexagonal segments that form
Webb’s mirror are made from a metal called Beryllium. This metal was chosen to keep the overall
mass of the mirror extremely low while still retaining lots of strength. Despite being about 3 times larger than Hubble’s
mirror, Webb’s mirror only had a fraction of the mass. But in order to construct these perfectly
polished mirror segments, they had to make 14 stops at 11 locations all across the US. The first journey started in the mountains
of Utah where the Beryllium powder was mined and shipped to Ohio, where it was purified
and turned into individual mirror blanks. Then, the blanks were sent to Alabama where
each one was machined into a honeycomb structure to reduce mass. The next destination was California, where
the mirrors were polished to the exact shape, perhaps the most crucial part of the process. After this, the segments made several trips
across the country, undergoing years of testing to check that they were polished correctly. On the 9th journey, the mirror segments traveled
to New Jersey, where gold was evaporated over them inside of a vacuum chamber to form a
very thin coating. After some more testing, the mirror segments
ended up in Maryland where they were assembled together and attached to the main instrument
module. After years of even more testing, the telescope
arrived in Redondo Beach, where it was finally attached to its enormous sunshield. 17 years
after the first mirror segment had been produced, James Webb was now ready to make its last
journey on Earth. The first leg of the trip involved getting
from the Northrop Grumman facility in Redondo Beach to a port in Seal Beach where a ship
would be waiting to take the telescope to French Guiana. Although this journey was just 41km, the transport
team only had one chance to make it happen. Before Webb hit the road, they used satellite
images to inspect every single part of the route to find all of the possible hazards
that would get in their way. Every pothole had to be filled and many traffic
lights had to be lifted in order for the container to fit underneath. To reduce the impact to the public and for
the safety of Webb, the telescope traveled during the night. However, this meant that it just had a 6 hour
window to make its 41km journey. This sounds easy, but since the container
was so big and heavy, it could only travel at around 8 km/h. And so, just in case any problems did occur,
NASA had selected various safe havens along the way where Webb could take shelter and
receive maintenance. With Webb ready to go, it left the factory
at midnight along with a convoy of support vehicles and police escorts. The crazy thing is that no roads were fully
closed down, and regular traffic had to be carefully escorted around the telescope as
it moved down the highway. Several trucks carrying pressurized bottles
of dry air followed Webb, constantly keeping its container topped up with the cleanest
air. Eventually, the telescope arrived at the port
in the early hours of the morning. Webb had successfully completed its first
leg of the journey, but this was only the beginning. Webb was then loaded onto a French cargo ship,
a process that involved first driving the container onto a barge and rotating it to
face the cargo ship's loading ramp. The container had to be kept almost exactly
level throughout the journey. So to avoid any rough seas, NASA worked with
the crew of the ship and planned a route that would take them through the calmest parts
of the ocean. This journey took 16 days in total, passing
through the Panama Canal and sailing up the Kourou River to reach its destination at the
Guiana Space Center. All in all, the James Webb telescope took
about 13 years to build - from the very first pieces being put together in 2004, to having
a finished telescope in 2017. It wasn’t just a NASA project. Space partners from all over the world contributed
parts to the telescope even before it made its journey to the launch pad. And now that the telescope is finally where
it needs to be, we can look forward to the incredible discoveries it will make about
our universe and the amazing pictures it will reveal. If you want to make your own incredible discoveries,
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