welcome the whole story i'm anderson cooper since its launch, a little more than two years ago, the james webb space telescope has been we capturing some of the most spectacular and enlightening images of outer space. >> we've ever seen its mission is to study every phase in the history of our universe. the data and the images from web are helping some of our smartest scientific minds answer some of the most intriguing questions of our time like, where did we come from? is time travel possible? and are we alone for the past? it's two years, cnn space correspondent kristin fisher has followed two teams of scientists as they were awarded precious minutes with the james webb telescope in an effort to answer these very quiet what they found is breathtaking and groundbreaking the james webb space telescope precedented in science and scale this is effectively the best time machine that we've ever created james webb is revealing the cosmic story where do we come from? are we alone in the universe? these are big questions unlocking the secrets that we never knew well over 10,000 individuals, $10 behind schedule we're by det there's thousands of ways this can go badly. and one way it goes right james, when begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe and those other worldly images displayed on a cosmic tapestry this is a historic moment for humanity and i feel we are super privilege that we can actually see this hopefully we'll be able to see a reflection of ourselves and to learn more about where we came from replacing our reality by rekindling a childlike imagination we are all astronomers as a kid, as an adult, you look up, you say, what's out there i can trace back my interest in space to a grade two assignments where the teacher asked me to do a project on the planets of the solar system. >> the fascination of things, not out of this earth for the rest of my life. that continued to stick with dan milli savile of inches astronomer and assistant professor at purdue university. >> he's also still just a kid at heart wow, i could watch it all for me. >> it's the energy and the so that he makes in his voice. but just like the away wow i love it that enthusiasm is the fuel that drives dan's curiosity to answer the mysteries of the universe. one star at a time do you remember the first time that you heard about cassie appiah, a it had to have been one of the first de it's very likely that that came up like lindsey is dan's wife and casio pia a or cache is a remnant of a supernova explosion that occurred about 11,000 light-years away but as the remnants of this massive star race through the milky way, light from the explosion only reached earth about 340 years ago, making the youngest known supernova remnant in our galaxy. >> can you explain how cassie has kind of followed you, inspired you, maybe even haunted you over the last few years yes. >> yes. i'll just say this i laughed with my wife that my phone now has more pictures of casi than my dog on a disgruntled wilbur is still proud of dad, who would become one of the first astronomers ever to be awarded precious observation hours on the most powerful telescope ever built why is it important to study the origin story of stars? we all want to know where we came from and how we got here on earth or a fox and tay attend them are part of dan's research team made up of 40 scientists from around the world our target is cassio pia because it is so young that is still dominant. the emission that we see comes from the material that was expelled in the explosion you may be familiar with the phrase we are all star dust. that is because stars produce the elements needed to form places like the earth and the solar system, and even life and that is why it is important for us to understand how stars evolve and how stars die, and how they feed back that star dust to the rest of the universe. >> it's because of these stellar explosions that we're here today the iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the oxygen that we breathe and they're just these incredible displays, a fireworks and colors and knots and bubbles and all sorts of exciting thing things that are going on until now. dan and his team had to rely on optical telescopes like the hubble telescope, which only captures visible light at shorter wavelengths but the webb telescope can capture radiation from longer infrared wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye. that allows astronomers to pure through dust particles back in time to the moment when some of the oldest stars in the universe were born as the universe expands light is stretched and hubble can only see light out to a certain distance. >> and that is why we needed to build a bigger telescope. to see beyond the depth that hubble can observe. to the very edge of the universe. and what you're looking at is light that left these stars and galaxies when they were babies, just a couple of hundred million years after the big bang. and so that light is just reaching us here on earth today so think of a chapter book of my life, where i went to kindergarten. >> there's an artwork. >> now imagine that chapter book were the first few years have been those are vital developmental years that really set in flay. >> what happens later in time. so webb will be able to access those earliest stages so that's why in a way, it's, it's a time of shape that's why it's a time machine leading roles, best dr. thomas or buccal or doctor z, was one of the top administrators at nasa working on web, and he more than anyone knew just how much was at stake. if you add everybody ahp was really touched that telescope as well over 10,000 individual and three space agency's in many different countries. >> and the price tag, it's a hefty one but it's about 10 billion. >> it was behind schedule it was over budget. was there ever any point in time where you thought gosh, i just don't know if this telescope is gonna get off the ground jwst had multiple near-death experiences. >> we made mistakes and be at challenges and frankly, the i asked an independent we view to actually answer the question as said, worth the wing considering how much we're struggling, there's only a few times in the history of i astronomy where we look at the sky in entirely new way for the first time and that happened with copernicus had happened with galileo. and it's happening james webb space telescope and for me, data leap of understanding, not leap of science. that's coming with don is just amazing coming up. the story of our universe is about to be rewritten but who will be the author i wonder what your message would be. two people who are considering putting in some proposals to the webb space telescope. >> my responses have added later meet a team of scientists close to finding life 1 billion miles away it's shocking to be honest i thought we had a plan for dan. he was set to go to the senior living community, right by my house then her friend suggested i talked to a place for mom. >> they really opened my eyes my advisor listened and understood his needs and showed us options that we're still nearby but a better fit for dad. now, he's in a warm, engaging community with the big group of friends. i know he made a better choice for free senior living advice, go to a place for mom.com have heart failure with unresolved symptoms. >> it may be time to see the bigger picture. heart failure and seemingly unrelated symptoms like carpal tunnel syndrome shortness of breath and irregular heartbeat could be something more serious called att rcm are rare under-diagnosed disease that worsens over time sound like you call your cardiac hello, just an ask about attr san dan made progress with his mental health, but his medication caused unintentional movements in his face, hands, and feet each called tardive dyskinesia or tdi. >> so his doctor prescribed us dead oh, xr a once-daily td treatment for adults barstow xr significantly reduced dance td movements. some people saw response as early as two weeks with us stato xr, dan can stay on his mental health meds cool air. >> a stato xr can cause depression. suicidal thoughts or actions in patients with huntington's disease pay close attention to and call your doctor if you become depressed, have sudden changes in mood good or if suicidal thoughts, don't take if you have liver problems, are taking reserpine, tetra benzene, or benzene or sato xr may cause irregular or fast heartbeat or abnormal movements, seek help for reversed stiff muscles, problems thinking or sweating common side effects include inflammation of the nose and throat, insomnia and sleepiness ask your job dr. >> for us dead. oh, xr i'm alex marc board in washington. >> and this is cnn when. >> a $10,000,000,000 telescope ready for launch, nasa opened attached to the general public for ideas on how to use web scientific pick proposals port in seeking answers from the origin of our universe to the cosmic curiosities closer to home the wonderful thing about web is that it's a facility that's open to anyone all over the world. >> let's see for today, i know the schedule is a little bit different than usual. >> christine, can oversees the proposal process at scsi, the space telescope science institute at johns hopkins university, home to webb's mission control. >> what sort of credentials so you have to have we try not to focus on credentials because we really want to select based on science project theoretically could anybody submit a proposal? yes, that's correct that's because nasa removed the identities of the almost 3,000 proposals that we're submitted in peer reviewed for webb's first two years in operation. so you don't know their qualifications? that's their gender, their age went from that's right. >> the reviewers don't know who wrote any of the proposal the thing that really stands out to me is just how open the webb telescope is, how it is anybody essentially can apply for time on the webspace let's go, i wonder what your message would be. two people who are considering putting in some proposals to the webb space telescope. my responses have at it we want to bring the world community into this. >> it was the world community that put this together for dan and his team, the waiting was the worst part so you wait and you wait and you wait. >> and then what happened? >> and then the email comes in and i remember i didn't open it. i let it hover there for a little bit as soon as i saw, we have approved your vesicle. >> yeah. >> i know. i screamed a loud i did my happy dance and i immediately shared the news. >> yes, we did it congratulations. it's the holy grail for you in terms of the data that you get back from cassie wow, well, we want to understand the story behind this star web is the missing clue. >> the final piece to the puzzle we need to understand the story of cassie and casa, maybe part of a larger puzzle, piecing together the story three of our universe. >> james webb begins of the universe well, the world watch the successful 2021 christmas day launch of the james webb telescope there were still some anxious moments during its first few days base, we had 30 days of terror because we had to watch this entire spacecraft unfold bit by bit. it is so large that we work for not able to as a whole fitted into a rocket and launch it. >> we have to come up with as a hallie calm design that allows us to follow that sort of like an oregon me, each of the 18 mirrors acts as its own independent telescope. >> stretching 21 feet across web is seen further back in time and with greater resolution than ever before. and that's a relief for nasa because there was no backup plan it had to be absolutely perfect because there was no way that we could go 1 million miles. and perform ophthalmology on it to correct its vision if you think about the webb space telescope you should think of it as basically two parts. it's a telescope that's really big and it's telescope that's really cold cold because in order to get the most crisp and distant infrared images of deep-space, webb needed to be parked in line with the earth. a million miles away. it could be shielded from the sun's radiation. >> so engineers designed to five layered sunshield. each layer the size of a tennis court, made up of a mylar tight membrane. the thickness of a human hair, the temperature drop between those five layers 600 degrees fahrenheit aesthetically, it's a funny look and telescope, right? >> but from the standpoint of science and engineering, it's beautiful scientifically beautiful, but visually to the untrained eye. >> the first images were lost in translation you. >> cannot say the sky in infrared, no matter how hard you try. >> so translating that into a color scale that is as consistent as possible with what we believe a stair and frankly, what we're doing is we're putting the de out so you too can pick up that data and do your own artistic interpretation. >> what do you see when you see this mess being mess? >> you're a housewife with a very interesting hobby yes. using nothing but a gaming computer and basic photo editing software amateur image processor, duty schmidt's work caught the eye of a young graduate student working on a hubble telescope project. >> i was scrolling the web looking for representations of a different supernova remnant. and i was really struck by the ones that she made fast forward years later with the launch of a web. she really came to mind is somebody that would be perfect duty. i'm looking forward to see what you can do. >> to help bring these gray scale images to life so when you get data from the webb space telescope, it comes back immediately looking kind of black and white and not all that spectacular because it's an infrared telescope. >> what do you then do with that data? >> you're only going to see a few little dots where the stars are i'm pulled them into photoshop and i can align them a little bit clearer. rotate them and then give it some color. >> there's an intimacy that's developed with the data when you start to make these color composites these have scientific value as well. >> these images are representations of the, of these energies that are coming in the infrared. so we assign each energy field der, color and we put them together to produce these beautiful images. so they look beautiful, but they also contain a lot of information. >> so what do you say to people who see these images and say, these aren't real, these are fake, these are, these are photoshopped well, i mean, they have to be photoshopped or you wouldn't see them. >> the picture that you talk with your phone yesterday off your family, who perhaps you brighten that up a little bit because you want to make sure everybody see stop babies, smile or knots photoshopping from scratch. and this this, and that we're taking the data and trying to come up with the best representation to explain what the data actually mean. if you don't like it, do it yourself. because the data the underlying data are there for you it's been a decades-long voyage for dan and pursued cassie. i've always imagine what this place looks like, but when we brought him to the space telescope's mission control in baltimore, his emotions got the best of it. >> this is the chelsea will house flight control room and breadth it, brought you to tears i'm just country astronomer from the middle west and here i am at mission operations control of the webb telescope, sunshield. that side pointed to us as it should be. >> now, it means so much or something that i've worked so hard towards to be able to experience it in person coming up one of saturn's many moons could let me the answer to finding life beyond her what's useful about enceladus is it spewing its guts out into outer space they are unpredictable sleeping giants every volcano has its own personality. >> or if we don't understand them, they are windows into the heart of our 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you get started with your idea called now 800s, 7100, 020 the, discovery of just one bacteria on mars or any other body of the solar system would indicate that the whole chain of evolutions cosmic chemical, and biological is it work everywhere in that case, the creation of life anywhere in the universe? would be more of the rule than the exception orson welles is soliloquy and nasa's documentary who's out there punctuated at trending discussion among other cosmic thinkers know that out there is 1 million other civilizations they all look fabulously ugly and they're all a lot smarter than us a half century later, the question is still out there one of the things that the webb space telescope is hoping to answer is the question of, are we alone in the universe well, think about it if the universe is as big as we have been told, and the james webb telescope scopus, revealing to us do i believe that there's life out there? >> yes, i do. >> that's a bold statement from nasa administrator. and do you thin