The James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space telescope ever built, is on schedule to launch on October 2018 at dawn from French Guiana in South America.

The remarkable new infrared device, the scientific successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope, is expected to serve as the premier observatory for a decade.

Here are 7 things you should know about the massive telescope before liftoff:

1. What’s JWST’s main mission? The powerful telescope will look far out into the universe and far back in time – to objects that began to glow following the Big Bang – in order to better understand the universe and our place in it. We’re looking to answer age-old questions: how did our universe begin and evolve? How did galaxies, stars and planets form? Are we alone?

2. The big difference: the Webb telescope will be able to view galaxies and planets in the infrared, objects that are older and further away than any previous technology could read. The telescope can look inside thick clouds of dust and gas to see where stars are born. The observatory will use spectroscopy, analyzing light by separating it into distinct wavelengths, in order to determine the chemical composition of atmospheres of alien worlds.

3. Just how far will it see? JWST will peer deep into the history of our universe. It should be able to measure back to when the Universe was just 200 million to 275 million years old – around two percent of its current age. The most distant galaxies Hubble recorded are 400 million to 600 million years old.

4. Scientists are especially excited about: Hunting for a potentially life-supporting exoplanet among the seven Earth-sized planets around the small TRAPPIST-1 star 40 light years away. The discovery of five of these exoplanets was just announced in February 2017. Three of them are firmly in the habitable zone, the area around a star where a rocky planet is most likely to have water. JWST will be able to view these planets in the infrared, using spectroscopy, to see if their potential atmospheres have water, methane, carbon monoxide/dioxide and/or oxygen. Translation: signs of life.

“For thousands of years, people have wondered, are there other planets like Earth out there? Do any support life?” said Sara Seager, astrophysicist and planetary scientist at MIT. “Now we have a bunch of planets that are accessible for further study to try to start to answer these ancient questions.”

5. What’s with the weird weathervane on top? Webb’s sunshield protects the telescope from the heat and light of the sun, moon and Earth. The sunshield, about the size of a 20-car parking lot, consists of five layers, each about the thickness of plastic wrap. The layers, which do not touch, are made of a material called Kapton, also used in spacesuits and circuitry, which has the convenient properties of being heat resistant and strong. The sunshield is coated on the sunward side with silicon, which reflects and radiates away the incoming sunlight.

6. Where is it headed? It will take a month for Webb to travel to its position, in a fixed orbit beyond the moon, 940,000 miles away from Earth. The frigid environment – minus 387 degrees Fahrenheit – will help keep the infrared telescope as cold as possible. JWST will always be positioned with the sun, Earth and moon on the same side, behind its sunshield. As Earth orbits the sun, it will sweep the telescope along with it, keeping it in this optimal location.

Once in space, JWST will take 14 days to deploy. After its launch rocket separates and drifts away, the telescope will unfold, Transformer-like, in a delicate ballet: solar arrays, antenna, sunshields, flaps, radiator, mirrors and wings deploying in scripted sequence.

Watch an animated depiction of the massive telescope as it blossoms in space:

7. Who is JWST named for? The international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, is named after James E. Webb, NASA’s second administrator. He headed the agency during its giant leap forward through the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, playing a key role in the Apollo space program and emphasizing scientific research as key to NASA’s mission.

© Content That Works