NASA Launches $9 Billion Infrared Telescope to Capture the Light from Beginning of Creation

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is opening a new era of astronomy. The telescope is built to give the world its first glimpse of the universe as it existed when the earliest galaxies formed. The telescope was launched by rocket early Saturday on Christmas Day from the northeastern coast of South America. The telescope will seek out the faint light from the first stars and galaxies, providing a glimpse into cosmic creation.

The revolutionary $9 billion infrared telescope, described by NASA as the premiere space-science observatory of the next decade, was carried aloft inside the cargo bay of an Ariane 5 rocket that blasted off at about 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) from the European Space Agency's (ESA) launch base in French Guiana, Reuters reported.

A NASA commentator said as the two-stage launch vehicle, "From a tropical rain forest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe.”

After a 27-minute, hypersonic ride into space, the 14,000-pound instrument was released from the upper stage of the French-built rocket about 865 miles above the Earth, and should gradually unfurl to nearly the size of a tennis court over the next 13 days as it sails onward on its own. Live video captured by a camera mounted on the rocket's upper stage showed the Webb gliding gently away after it was jettisoned, drawing cheers and applause from jubilant flight engineers in the mission control center, Reuters added in the report.

Coasting through space for two more weeks, the Webb telescope will reach its destination in solar orbit 1 million miles from Earth or about four times farther away than the moon. And Webb's special orbital path will keep it in constant alignment with the Earth as the planet and telescope circle the sun in tandem.

By comparison, Webb's 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, orbits the Earth from 340 miles away, passing in and out of the planet's shadow every 90 minutes. Named after the man who oversaw NASA through most of its formative decade of the 1960s, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than Hubble and is expected to transform scientists' understanding of the universe and our place in it.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, striking a spiritual tone as he addressed the launch webcast by video link, quoted the Bible and hailed the new telescope as a "time machine" that will "capture the light from the very beginning of the creation."

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