Leading Scientists visit GMS

Top scientists from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Programme visited Great Marlow School on 11th July and spoke to a packed audience.

The Year 7 students from Great Marlow School along with primary pupils from Foxes Piece School and Danesfield School were treated to an inspiring and enthralling presentation from two of the leading Scientists from JWST Programme.

The Webb Telescope is the world’s next-generation space observatory and successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The most powerful space telescope ever built, the Webb Telescope will observe distant objects in the universe, provide images of the first galaxies formed and see unexplored planets around distant stars. The Webb Telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

The first part of the presentation on Tuesday morning was a film documentary called ‘Into the Unknown’ which tells the story of the building of the telescope, which is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST will be launched in late 2018, the documentary showed how Webb will reveal a universe we have never seen before: it is poised to answer questions such as, how did the universe make its first stars and galaxies?

Following the film, students were able to ask questions of two of the leading scientists involved with the programme Alberto Conti, who works for Northrop Grumman, and Ritva Keski-Kuha from NASA. Arguably two of the world’s most intelligent people were thoroughly challenged by the very testing questions posed by a members of the young audience.

We would like to pay particular thanks to Gillian Arnott, Simon Cooper and Carleen Beste at Northrop Grumman for their organisation and support with the visit to Great Marlow School.

Northrop Grumman is under contract to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre for JWST and leads the industry team that designs and develops the telescope, its sunshield and spacecraft.