NASA Successfully Launches James Webb Space Telescope

NASA successfully launched its revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope this morning at 7:20 a.m. EST/4:20 a.m. PST. The telescope took off from an Ariane 5 rocket located at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. A joint effort with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, the Webb mission marks “the world’s largest and most complex space science observatory,” NASA said. Over the next 29 days, the telescope will reshape and transform itself over the course of its journey until it settles at its final destination approximately one million miles from Earth.

 

After six months, the telescope will deliver its first images of space. The telescope will allow scientists to explore cosmic history both within our solar system and in distant galaxies, yielding more information about cosmic phenomena and the origins of the universe. “The James Webb Space Telescope represents the ambition that NASA and our partners maintain to propel us forward into the future,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “The promise of Webb is not what we know we will discover; it’s what we don’t yet understand or can’t yet fathom about our universe.” Over 30 years have passed since NASA first began its efforts to build the Next Generation Space Telescope as a follow on to the Hubble Space Telescope. $10 billion and many years beyond scheduled completion the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) finally made it to space. The Ariane 5 launch vehicle did its spectacular and nail biting job of launching the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) into space right on time at 7:20 a.m. EST, Christmas Day 2021. The collective hearts and minds of the 10,000 people who invested their time – an estimated 40 million hours – , energy, anxiety and in some cases their entire careers, rode on that receding plume of fire in the skies of Kourou. The European Space Agency (ESA) received the first critical signals from the Webb spacecraft shortly after lift off using their space communication system. Now that JWST is in space there are key milestones that need to take place on its 29 day, one million mile voyage to L2. JWST must successfully complete 344 single point of failure events to successfully unfold from its launch configuration to full splendor and capability. This NASA website l has gone live to give the world updates on what is happening on JWST and where it is in space so we can all follow the mission to L2. More later today as I will be interviewing two people about Webb. THE CANDLE HAS BEEN LIT! ON TO L2!!!