The most ambitious and costly telescope ever built was fired into space on Christmas Day, with the aim of seeing deeper into space — and therefore further back in time — than ever before.
After three decades of planning and construction beset by many delays and escalating costs, the $10bn James Webb Space Telescope is finally on its way to a special orbit, four times further from Earth than the Moon.
At the European Space Agency’s control centre in Kourou, French Guiana, scientists and engineers cheered and applauded at the critical moment that marked a successful launch, when the telescope separated from the upper stage of the Ariane 5 rocket after 27 minutes and started an independent journey to its observing point 1.5m km away.
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