Scientists around the world expect that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s James Webb Space Telescope, beleaguered by a 10-year delay and cost overruns, will herald a new era of discovery in space. One hundred times as powerful as the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb will help astronomers peer at some of the oldest galaxies and stars in the universe, search for signs of habitability in the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system and study mysterious forces like dark energy using its infrared sensors.
At 7:20 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, the Webb telescope is scheduled to blast into the skies above Europe’s Spaceport aboard an Ariane 5 rocket, beginning its 29-day journey to a point four times as distant as the moon called the second Lagrange point. There it will orbit the sun, 1 million miles from the Earth, until at least 2026.