The $10 billion James Webb telescope has launched on a mission to reveal the earliest stars that illuminated the Universe. An Ariane rocket launched from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana carried the observatory into the sky.
It took just under half an hour to reach orbit, with a signal indicating a successful landing picked up by a base station near Malindi, Kenya. Webb is the successor to the Hubble telescope, which was named after one of the architects of the Apollo Moon landings.
The new observatory, however, was designed by engineers in collaboration with the US, European, and Canadian space agencies to be 100 times more powerful.
The most powerful space telescope in the world is launched into orbit. NASA tweeted, “Webb’s mission to #UnfoldTheUniverse will revolutionise our knowledge of space as we know it.”
At the moment the rocket left the Earth, American space agency (Nasa) TV commentator Rob Navias said, “Lift off from a tropical jungle to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins an odyssey back to the origin of the Universe.”
The excitement of lift-off was tempered with apprehension. Thousands of people from all around the world have worked on the project over the last 30 years, and while the Ariane is a very reliable vehicle, there are no guarantees with rockets.
