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JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
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PYTHON
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Did you know that NASA's software engineers use Python programming language to receive, organize, and file all the data that comes from a telescope?
The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes called JWST or Webb) is a large infrared telescope with an approximately 6.5 meter primary mirror. Webb successfully launched from ESA's spaceport in French Guiana on December 25, 2021 07:20am EST ( 2021-12-25 12:20 GMT/UTC).
Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System. Webb was formerly known as the "Next Generation Space Telescope" (NGST); it was renamed in Sept. 2002 after a former NASA administrator, James Webb.
The spectacular photos that JWST took of glimmering nebulas and "cosmic cliffs" also contain valuable data that scientists rely on to research the galaxies. As JWST orbits 1 million miles away, software engineers back on Earth use Python to receive, organize, and file all the data that comes from the telescope.
Data from NASA’s Deep Space Network feeds down into the Space Telescope Science Institute’s processing systems using Python. "And that's where my code comes in", Mike Swam, the data processing team lead who worked on JWST, said on one podcast in March 2022. "Also, we have a lot of data completion checking that we do in Python".
