James Webb Space Telescope: NASA Successfully launches $10B Space Telescope

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

NASA's journey beyond stars is officially underway. The space agency got exactly what it wanted for Christmas with the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. 

Folded inside the nose cone of the European Ariane 5 rocket, the $10B space observatory lifted off from its launch site Arianespace's ELA-3 launch complex at European Spaceport located near Kourou, French Guiana early Christmas morning.

NASA's James Webb space telescope represents a new era in space discovery. The James Webb Space Telescope is NASA's largest and most expensive scientific probe ever sent into space.

 

As each rocket stage fell away, Webb was set loose. Cheers went up and images of the earth receded as the most powerful space telescope ever build began a voyage in search of the birth of the universe. 

It's going to replace the 31 year old Hubble Space Telescope as the premiere space observatory. Hubble telescope revealed stars and galaxies never seen before but there is more to be discovered. 

For the last 31 years, the Hubble telescope has orbited just overhead about 550 kilometers above the earth. The Webb telescope is being sent to a point four times further away than the moon. 

The trek will take about a month and it will end up 1.5 million kilometers away and there's a reason for that. Webb requires utter darkness and super cold conditions. A solar shield the size of a tennis court will unfold to block the heat of the sun and the light from the sun the earth and even the moon. 

The Webb's mirrors expanding to six and a half meters across will capture infrared light emitted eons ago by the first stars. 

Scientists hope it will teach us new information about our universe and its origins. We will get closer to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago that set off the early formation of the universe creating the first galaxies and eventually our solar system and the earth just four and a half billion years ago.

The Webb telescope will look deeper into space than ever before effectively taking us back to see the light from the first stars and even the darkness before that.

The Webb space telescope begins a new era in space that will expand our understanding of where we came from and how we got here.