If everything goes according to plan on December 25, we will enter a new era of astronomy with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It's an event that has been anticipated for a decade—it will be the largest and most expensive and complex telescope ever built, tested and launched into space.

At the time of writing, the US$10 billion (£7.5 billion) telescope has been fuelled for its flight and mounted atop the Ariane 5 rocket at Europe's spaceport in French Guiana, which will carry it in to space.

The launch will be both exciting and terrifying for the thousands of scientists, engineers, managers and support staff who have brought JWST to this point. As chair of the Space Telescope Science Institute Council, which will run the operations center for JWST, I'll share their nervousness.

Earth is in the midst of a climate crisis. Thanks to rising CO₂ emissions since the early 20th century, global temperatures are rising, triggering a positive feedback cycle that threatens to make it worse. According to recent analyses, even if the industrialized nations agree to slash carbon emissions drastically, global warming will not begin to slow until mid-century. For this reason, emission reduction needs to be paired with carbon capture to ensure we avoid the worst-case scenarios.

Meanwhile, there is a significant outcry from the public concerning commercial space. Whereas advocates like Elon Musk argue that increasing access to space is key to our long-term survival, critics and detractors respond by stating that commercial space "steals focus" from Earth's problems and that rocket launches produce excessive carbon emissions. In what could be a response to these challenges, Musk recently announced that SpaceX would be starting a carbon capture (CC) program to create propellants for his rockets.

The CC process begins with the removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere through air scrubbers, absorption, chemical catalysts, or other methods.