NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was selected for the 2022 Bloomberg 50, its annual list of icons, leaders, and innovators that have changed the global business landscape over the past year.
An unranked list, the Bloomberg 50 represents Bloomberg Businessweek’s selections for the most influential leaders in business, finance, politics, entertainment, science, and technology whose 2022 accomplishments were particularly noteworthy. The award also names “people doing historic things and inanimate objects doing mind-blowing things,” including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
“The James Webb Space Telescope shows what can be done when a dedicated international team commits to solving very tough engineering and technology challenges to see our universe in a new light. And as it happens, that ‘new’ light is the very old light from the first galaxies that lit up our universe, as well as light from the very new stars in our own galaxy. It’s been an honor to be a part of this effort,” said Mike Menzel, Webb lead mission systems engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Webb is an infrared observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, with longer wavelength coverage and greatly improved sensitivity. Webb is a unique mission with ambitious science goals, which required the development of several innovative and powerful new technologies ranging from optics to detectors to thermal control systems. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
Launched Dec. 25, 2021, from French Guiana, the Webb telescope is already providing new views of the universe and uncovering secrets that were previously inaccessible. Webb has seen early galaxies and peered through dusty clouds to see stars forming, such as in the Pillars of Creation. Webb has also provided new imagery of exoplanets and planets in our own solar system.
Webb is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb’s design pushed the boundaries of space telescope capabilities to solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.
NASA Headquarters, Washington oversees the Webb telescope mission. NASA Goddard manages Webb for the agency and oversees work on the mission performed by the Space Telescope Science Institute, Northrop Grumman, and other mission partners. In addition to Goddard, several NASA centers contributed to the project, including the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and others.
For more information about the Webb mission, visit:
Thaddeus Cesari
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
thaddeus.cesari@nasa.gov