NASA launches revolutionary space telescope
Insights into the early universe
Gabriel Thomas (GT)May 9, 2025
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which was built to give the world the first glimpse of the universe as it existed when the earliest galaxies were formed, was launched by rocket early Saturday from the northeast coast of South America and opened a new era of astronomy.
The revolutionary $ 9 billion infrared telescope, dubbed the first space science observatory in the next decade by NASA, was carried in the hold of an Ariane 5 rocket that departed at around 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) from the European Space Agency (ESA) launch base in French Guiana took off.
The smooth start on Christmas Day with a countdown in French was broadcast live in a joint webcast by NASA and ESA. The start was the culmination of a decade-long project that came about after years of repeated delays and cost overruns.
"From a tropical rainforest to the edge of time, James Webb embarks on a journey back to the birth of the universe," said a NASA commentator as the two-stage rocket launch with two solid rocket rockets from the launch pad into the cloudy sky.
After a 27-minute hypersonic flight into space, the 14,000-pound instrument was released from the upper stage of the France-built rocket at an altitude of about 865 miles above Earth and is expected to gradually expand to the size of a tennis court over the next 13 days while it flies on on its own.
A live video captured by a camera mounted on the missile's upper stage showed the Webb gently floating away after being dropped, cheered and applauded by the cheering flight engineers in the mission control center.
A few moments later, when the Webb's solar cells were extended, flight controllers confirmed that the power supply was working.
After a two-week journey through space, the Webb telescope will reach its destination in a solar orbit 1 million miles from Earth - about four times further than the moon. The Webb telescope's special orbit will keep it in constant alignment with the earth as the planet and telescope orbit the sun in tandem.
By comparison, Webb's 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, orbits Earth at a distance of 340 miles, entering and exiting the planet's shadow every 90 minutes.
Webb, named after the man who ran NASA for most of its founding decade in the 1960s, is about 100 times more sensitive than Hubble and is set to transform scientists' understanding of the universe and our place in it.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson took on a spiritual tone when he video-linked to the start page, quoting the Bible and promoting the new telescope as a "time machine" that "will capture the light from the beginning of creation."
COSMOLOGICAL HISTORY LESSON
Webb will look at the cosmos primarily in the infrared spectrum and see through clouds of gas and dust in which stars are formed, while Hubble has so far mainly worked in the optical and ultraviolet range.
The main mirror of the new telescope - consisting of 18 hexagonal segments made of gold-coated beryllium metal - also has a much larger light-collecting surface, which enables it to observe objects at greater distances and thus further back in time than Hubble or any other telescope.
This, say the astronomers, will enable a never-before-seen view of the cosmos, which begins just 100 million years after the Big Bang, the theoretical flash point that started the expansion of the observable universe an estimated 13.8 billion years ago.
Hubble's gaze stretched back around 400 million years after the Big Bang, shortly after the first galaxies - vast collections of stars, gases, and other interstellar matter - presumably took shape.
While Hubble captured a glimmer of "toddler" galaxies, Webb will reveal these objects in greater detail while capturing even weaker, earlier "baby" galaxies, NASA Webb program scientist Eric Smith told hours before launch Reuters.
Astronomers want to study not only the formation of the earliest stars and galaxies, but also supermassive black holes, which are believed to be in the centers of distant galaxies.
Webb's instruments are also great for finding clues to potentially livable atmospheres around numerous newly discovered exoplanets - celestial bodies orbiting distant stars - and for observing worlds much closer to our homes, such as Mars and the Earth Ice moon Titan of Saturn.
The telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies. Northrop Grumman Corp (NYSE: NOC) was the prime contractor. The Arianespace launcher is part of the European contribution.
"The world gave us this telescope and we gave it back to the world today," said Gregory Robinson, NASA's Webb program director, at a post-launch press conference.
The Webb telescope cost $ 8.8 billion to develop, and its operating costs are expected to be $ 9.66 billion - far more than planned when NASA was still aiming for a launch in 2011.
The astronomical operation of the telescope, which is to be led by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, is expected to begin in the summer of 2022 after aligning and calibrating the Webb's mirrors and instruments for about six months.
Then NASA is expected to release the first images captured by Webb. Webb is designed for a service life of up to 10 years.
