James Webb Space Telescope

JWST

Mission Profile

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is NASA's flagship space observatory, launched on 25 December 2021 aboard an Ariane 5 to the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, serving as the scientific successor to Hubble with a 6.5-meter segmented gold-coated beryllium mirror and instruments sensitive from near-ultraviolet through mid-infrared wavelengths. JWST reaches temperatures below 50 Kelvin using a five-layer tennis-court-sized sunshield to observe the first stars and galaxies that formed after the Big Bang, characterize exoplanet atmospheres for potential biosignatures, and study the formation of planetary systems around young stars. Within its first year of science operations JWST returned images of the highest sensitivity ever achieved in infrared astronomy, directly detected carbon dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere for the first time, and observed the most distant galaxies ever confirmed spectroscopically. Built through an unprecedented 30-year collaboration between NASA, ESA, and CSA, JWST is designed for a 10-year mission with potentially 20 years of fuel on board after a near-perfect launch and deployment.