New Frontiers

Making of the James Webb Space Telescope In December of 2021, NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope into a deep orbit with the Sun, almost a million miles from the Earth. It is NASA’s top science priority - the most ambitious telescope ever made - and successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The project marks the culmination of the careers of George and Marcia Rieke, a world-renowned husband-and-wife research team from the University of Arizona. They played a part in designing two of the four main instruments on the breakthrough telescope, which together might be capable of catching a glimpse of the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang. Space Robots It has now been 50 years since NASA astronauts last set foot on the Moon, but a return mission might soon be in the offing. The Space and Terrestrial Robotic Exploration (SpaceTREx) Laboratory at the University of Arizona, headed by aerospace engineer Jekan Thanga, is currently developing swarms of autonomous robots capable of constructing bases and mining for resources on celestial bodies like the Moon, Mars, or asteroids. He is teaming up with mining engineer Moe Momayez to develop specialized drilling tools to mount on these space robots, which could one day make prolonged space exploration more practical.