What to know about NASA's $10B James Webb Space Telescope

NASA's $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope has sent its first batch of images from space, providing a view of space farther from Earth than ever seen.

The images, released July 12, show infrared images from deep in the universe.

Here's a closer look at the history-making telescope, the largest and most powerful ever launched into space. This illustration depicts the telescope fully unfolded in space. Image by Adriana Manrique Gutierrez/NASA

The Webb telescope is composed of 18 hexagonal mirrors that, combined, are 21 feet across. Its light-collecting area is about six times that of its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. It is powerful enough to allow NASA to observe the chemical composition of other planets and determine if they are habitable. The telescope floats away from its rocket in space after launch from South America on Christmas Day. Photo courtesy of Arianespace/NASA

The telescope's infrared vision can peer 13.5 billion years into the universe's past -- seeing the light of the first stars and galaxies as they formed after the Big Bang. Unlike the Hubble Telescope, which orbits the Earth, Webb is floating at a special spot in space known as a Lagrange point nearly 1 million miles away from the planet.An illustration depicts the James Webb Space Telescope fully deployed in space. Image courtesy of NASA

It took about 300 procedures to unfurl the observatory's tennis court-sized sun shield. The super-cooled infrared instruments will be used to observe exoplanets, black holes and galaxies that formed 13.5 billion years ago, the earliest ever seen. But those instruments must be so cold -- minus-370 degrees F -- that sunlight or even Webb's own thrusters could cause interference. The sun shield walls off the instruments from the heat.Engineers work on a test of primary mirror segments in 2014. Photo by Chris Gunn/NASA

Webb's 18 gold-plated mirrors gather light from the depths of the universe and reflect that light toward an instrument that collects it. The primary mirror measures 21 feet across, significantly larger than Hubble's primary mirror, which is 7.9 feet across. This allows Webb to collect more light and get a better view of distant objects.

The ninth mirror is installed onto the telescope structure with a robotic arm inside NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Photo by Chris Gunnď»ż/NASA

Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket lifted off carrying the telescope at 7:20 a.m. EST on Dec. 25 from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana. The telescope is a joint venture by NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and European Space Agency. Northrop Grumman built the giant telescope in California beginning in 2004.The rocket launches with the telescope onboard. Photo by Chris Gunn/NASA

Operations have since been turned over to the non-profit Space Telescope Science Institute based in Baltimore, which also operates Hubble. Webb has enough fuel to operate for more than its maximum lifespan of 10 years.

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NASA releases first full set of images from $10B James Webb Space Telescope
Washington DC (UPI) Jul 12, 2021
NASA on Tuesday unveiled its first full collection of images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope - showcasing the type photos that engineers had in mind when they first conceived of the telescope in the 1990s. The space agency unveiled the collection of five images from the $10 billion telescope during an event late Tuesday morning at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The images were simultaneously released on social media and the NASA website. "These first images fr ... read more