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NASA's Webb Telescope Launches to See First Galaxies, Distant Worlds

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December 25, 2021 9:00AM (EST)Release ID: 2021-068
Toward the top is a rocket, a long, pointed cylinder with two smaller cylinders, or boosters, attached toward the bottom. The rocket appears very distant in the sky, cutting a tiny figure. It is within thick, orange and blue clouds that are lit up by the rocket’s boosters. The boosters have long streams of ignited propellant streaming away from them, toward the bottom, forming a rough triangle shape. About halfway down the image, the propellant becomes wider and appears in various shades of gray, forming clouds of exhaust. The cloud cover also breaks at this point, though the sky is a dark hazy gray toward the bottom of the screen.

Summary

The James Webb Space Telescope launched on Dec. 25 at 7:20 a.m. EST Saturday on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, South America.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launched on Dec. 25 at 7:20 a.m. EST Saturday on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, South America. Webb, a partnership with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, will explore every phase of cosmic history – from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe.

Full Article

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope launched at 7:20 a.m. EST Saturday on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, South America. A joint effort with ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency, the Webb observatory is NASA’s revolutionary flagship mission to seek the light from the first galaxies in the early universe and to explore our own solar system, as well as planets orbiting other stars, called exoplanets.  “The James Webb Space Telescope represents the ambition that NASA and our partners maintain to propel us forward into the future,” said NASA ...

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Visit NASA Science to view the full news release including article text and associated Webb imagery, graphics, scientific visualizations, videos, captions, text descriptions, and other information.

News releases highlighting the discoveries of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are produced for NASA by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, under NASA Contract NAS5-03127. News release content is developed by the News Team in STScI’s Office of Public Outreach.

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