"Space: the final frontier."
What aspiring astronomer can ever forget the first time he heard Captain James T. Kirk (as voiced by William Shatner) solemnly intone the original "Star Trek" opening monologue? A contemporary adaptation might now conclude: "These are the visual adventures of the space telescope Webb. Its 20-year mission: to explore strange new galaxies. To look for new worlds and new life. To boldly see where no one has seen before."
Launched flawlessly on Christmas morning last year, the James Webb Space Telescope is a modern marvel on many levels. More than 20,000 engineers, astronomers, technicians and officials worked collectively and collaboratively for 30 years to build the most powerful eyepiece ever developed.
And Webb has already started delivering $10 billion views of the universe. The initial visuals released by NASA--which included amazing imagery and stunning star groups from deep space--highlight Webb's superiority as successor to the Hubble telescope.
Unlike Hubble, which orbits Earth, Webb is stationed a million miles away and orbits the sun from a point "behind" our planet, which keeps its optics and instruments perpetually in Earth's shadow (and the moon's, too, sometimes).
Its massive mirror comprising 18 hexagonal plates is not only much larger than Hubble's, but is working twice as well as expected, and is seven times better at light-gathering than Hubble.
Because it uses infrared light, it must be kept at temperatures near absolute zero (down to -447 degrees Fahrenheit). The sophisticated sunshield that keeps Webb so cold is roughly the size of a tennis court, and the entire observatory station had to be methodically unfolded via remote control.
There were 344 single-failure points in the unfolding process, and the mirror calibration involves 126 actuators.
Insanely impressive physics and logistics aside, the Webb telescope is also an amalgam of allegories. The stories of its development, domain and discovery mission overlap with ancient wonders planted in humankind's psyche from the very beginning.
Looking up to the heavens, as the celestial starscape of night has been traditionally called, is an age-old instinct. Space's vastness, similar to but infinitely greater than that of the ocean, is humbling to the core.
The shrouded mysteries of space and its science are made even more mystical because they are so far beyond the reach of the human eye. Outer space is also abominably hostile to homo sapiens. And even though it's an environment utterly unforgiving in deadliness, it's still irresistible to our wandering impulses and insatiable curiosities.
The question of whether there's life "out there" is always tethered tightly to our ceaseless reckoning of our life and purpose here. Learning more about the cosmos inherently reminds us of our place in it.
One of the blessings of rural living is beholding the darker night sky, which appears as an expanse of black velvet sprinkled with starlight glitter. Light pollution in highly urbanized areas doesn't only obscure the stars--it obliterates their meditative power.
The Webb telescope's namesake was the NASA administrator during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who oversaw the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.
Ironically, Webb was reluctant to accept the appointment in 1961 to lead NASA, noting he was not a scientist or an engineer and that someone who knew more "about rocketry, about space" would be better for the job. Nevertheless, he went on to a (pardon the pun) stellar career, during which the space agency launched more than 75 missions to further knowledge about the science of stars and galaxies.
Despite Webb's success in steering NASA from a fledgling government outfit to the far-flung 35,000-employee agency that fulfilled Kennedy's man-on-the-moon challenge, many in the astronomical community objected to naming the telescope after him.
For some, the problem was the same scientific resumé issue from his NASA appointment: Other telescopes had been named after astronomers, and Webb was only an administrator.
In recent years, however (the naming announcement was made in 2002, 10 years after Webb's death), a cancel-culture smear campaign against Webb arose, centered around allegations of homophobia.
Because Webb served as undersecretary of state during the Truman administration during the "lavender scare," some critics believed his name was unworthy to grace a groundbreaking telescope.
NASA historians conducted a thorough investigation, and concluded late last year that there is no evidence Webb had anything to do with that period, during which the federal government systematically purged gay and lesbian employees, calling them security risks as possible communist blackmail targets over their secret lifestyles.
LGBTQ sharks rarely retreat once blood is in the water, however, and as soon as Webb's images appeared, so did renewed calls to rename the telescope. Par for the plagued identity-politics course, other groups defended Webb for his highly vocal support of Black people and women at NASA.
The Webb observatory pulls light in from the farthest reaches of space, allowing us to view astounding images that reshape our vision of the universe.
How fitting that a telescope might also focus more eye-opening light on the pathetic practice of guilt-by-association campaigns, so the public can see more clearly how these shameful character assassination attempts are born and carried out.
Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.