Black Card
The James Webb Space Telescope cost $10 billion, launched 14 years late, and immediately ___________.
Cards Against Artemis™
Dossier 06 of 10Operational
James Webb Space Telescope.
Over budget. Over schedule. Over-delivering beyond anyone's wildest projections. The most productive scientific instrument humanity has ever built. We don't know how to process this.
§ 1 — Deep Space Surveillance (Extremely Pretty)
The Most Expensive Instrument Ever Built Is Also the Most Productive.
Webb launched on December 25, 2021 — Christmas Day. It cost approximately $10 billion, was originally estimated at $1 billion, and immediately began producing science that made everyone forget about the cost.
Webb can see galaxies that formed 300 million years after the Big Bang. The Big Bang was 13.8 billion years ago. Webb is looking at light that has been traveling for 13.5 billion years. When that light left its source, Earth did not exist.
Recent discoveries: the most detailed dark matter map ever made, the most distant galaxy ever detected, Uranus auroras in 3D, and 70 dusty galaxies that "could rewrite our understanding of the cosmos."
Next: the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches as early as September 2026 and will map dark matter over an area 4,400× larger than Webb's current map.
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Your Turn.
Tap a white card to fill the blank. Click a filled blank to clear it.
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White Card
Played
“Looked at a galaxy 13.5 billion light-years away and asked for more funding.”
Cards Against Artemis™
White Card
Played
“Found 70 galaxies that broke our models. The models are in therapy.”
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White Card
Played
“Answered three questions and generated forty-seven more. This is called progress.”
Cards Against Artemis™