Synopsis
Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine (2023) is a Netflix documentary you can watch online on iFILM. Just over an hour long, it trains its attention on the James Webb telescope and the people who spent two decades assembling a machine built to peer at the faintest, farthest galaxies.
The film moves through the project's timeline: from early blueprints and the agonizing tests of those gold-coated mirrors to the white-knuckle launch on Christmas morning 2021, when a single fault would have erased billions of dollars and entire careers. Engineers and astronomers — Amber Straughn, Thomas Zurbuchen and their colleagues — describe waiting for a signal from a million and a half kilometers away and what it felt like when the first images finally arrived.
Director Shai Gal bets on suspense and the rush of discovery rather than flashy effects; a brief address from Joe Biden to the team turns up along the way. Short but dense, it's for anyone pulled toward space and toward stories where science rides on the nerves of real people. Stream Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine online on iFILM.
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