[Watch] Who We Are, What We Are: ‘Time Machine’ Telescope James Webb Off To #UnfoldTheUniverse, #UnlockBigBang

New Delhi: As you read this, Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is already thousands of miles away from Earth, streaking through the void of space after launching successfully atop an Ariane 5 rocket on Saturday from Kourou, French Guiana.

After years of delay and cost overruns, the $10 billion JWST left Earth — its home and all of humanity — finally, rising above the European Space Agency (ESA) spaceport, surrounded by tropical rainforests, on way to its destination, a million miles away from our planet.

Once positioned in its planned orbit around the Sun and with all systems functioning, the JWST, dubbed a “time machine”, will peer 13.8 million years back in time — on a cosmic scale, only a “few” years short of the Big Bang moment — to answer, as Nasa administrator Bill Nelson put it: “Who we are, what we are, the search that’s eternal.”

The launch of JWST heralds a new dawn in astronomy. More powerful than Hubble, it promises to unlock answers about the origin of the universe and also our own.

“We have delivered a Christmas gift to humanity,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.

Twenty-seven minutes after liftoff, the telescope separated from Arian’s upper stage. Its solar arrays have already unfurled, said reports.

But before JWST can #UnfoldTheUniverse, the giant telescope, which had to be folded to fit inside the rocket, has to unfurl successfully, which has been described by Nasa as “the most complex sequence of deployments ever attempted in a single space mission”.

Launch over, scientists will now focus on the unfurling of its folded gold-tinted mirrors, tennis court-sized sunshield and other critical parts over the coming weeks and months before JWST begins to answer life’s ‘big questions’.