James Webb Space Telescope launched
After well over a decade of development (and setbacks as the project fell in and out of favor with successive administrations of the U.S. government), the international James Webb Space Telescope is launched aboard an Ariane V rocket from the European Space Agency’s Kourou Space Center in French Guiana. Constructed and operated by NASA, the Webb Space Telescope is the larger successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and its intricate, origami-like construction is expected to take a full month to deploy as the telescope travels to the L2 LaGrange point, well beyond the orbit of the moon. Its multi-segmented mirror is expected to see much more distant objects than Hubble was capable of resolving, possibly including the first galaxies to form in the history of the universe.