A new eye on the sky
NASA's newest space telescope is now in orbit after a smooth launch. The agency called the moment a giant leap forward for astronomy. The telescope is designed to spend years scanning the sky, mapping galaxies across the universe and measuring how they move. It joins a fleet of space observatories, but it is built for a different job: looking at the largest structures in the universe rather than individual stars and planets.
Dark energy and dark matter
Scientists know that ordinary matter makes up only a small fraction of the universe. The rest is dark matter, which holds galaxies together, and dark energy, which pushes the universe to expand faster. Neither has been seen directly. The two forces are among the deepest mysteries in physics. Dark matter was proposed decades ago to explain why galaxies spin faster than their visible mass allows, and dark energy emerged from observations that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. The new telescope will study both by watching how light from distant galaxies is bent and stretched as it travels across billions of years. Those measurements will help scientists build a detailed map of cosmic structure and test whether dark energy changes over time.
A multi-year mission
Engineers will spend the coming weeks testing the telescope's mirrors and instruments. Once calibration is done, the survey begins. The mission will observe millions of galaxies and is expected to produce the largest map of the universe ever made. The data could answer questions that have puzzled physicists for decades, including how the expansion of the universe accelerated. Scientists say the results will reshape textbooks, but they also warn that patience is needed. The full picture will take years to assemble, and each new release of data will be studied closely by observatories around the world. The mission is a joint effort with European partners, and data will be shared openly with the global scientific community.