James Webb Space Telescope

James Webb Space Telescope

Spacecraft· NASA / ESA / CSAactive

JWST — the infrared flagship observatory, halo-orbiting the Sun–Earth L2 point.

Open in 3D viewSee James Webb Space Telescope in the live, interactive 3D map

Key facts

Current speed
29.9 km/s
Distance from Sun
1.02 AU
Status
Active
Launched
2021

Mission & specifications

Mission

Operator
NASA / ESA / CSA
Launched
December 25, 2021
Status
Active

Trajectory

Current speed
29.9 km/s
Distance from the Sun
1.02 AU
Distance from Earth
1,662,699 km
Distance from Venus
0.649 AU

Cost & funding

Program cost
$1.00 × 10¹⁰ USD

Mission

The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest and most powerful observatory ever sent into space, built to capture the infrared light of the most distant objects in the universe. A joint project of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency, two decades in the making and costing around ten billion dollars, it launched on 25 December 2021. Its 6.5-metre mirror — made of eighteen gold-coated segments — and a five-layer sunshield the size of a tennis court were too big to fly open, so they had to unfold in space through a nerve-wracking sequence of hundreds of single steps, any one of which could have crippled the mission. Every step worked. Unlike Hubble, which orbits Earth, Webb travelled to the L2 point 1.5 million kilometres out, where it can stay cold and stare into deep space. Its first full-colour images, released in July 2022, showed the sharpest infrared view of the early universe ever captured. Since then it has peered back toward the cosmic dawn, finding galaxies that formed surprisingly early and bright, probed the chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres — detecting carbon dioxide and water on distant worlds — and watched stars being born inside clouds of dust opaque to ordinary telescopes. Working alongside the ageing Hubble, Webb has opened a new window on the cosmos, and is expected to operate for two decades.

  1. 2021Launch on an Ariane 5Launch

    The largest space telescope ever built lifts off from French Guiana on Christmas Day.

  2. 2022Arrives at L2Arrival

    Settles into orbit 1.5 million km from Earth after flawlessly unfolding its mirror and sunshield.

  3. 2022Webb's first deep fieldMilestone

    Releases the deepest, sharpest infrared image of the distant universe yet taken.

  4. 2022Carbon dioxide on an exoplanetMilestone

    Makes the first clear detection of CO2 in the atmosphere of a planet around another star.

  5. 2023Galaxies from the cosmic dawnMilestone

    Confirms some of the earliest, most distant galaxies ever seen, surprising cosmologists.

Images

The James Webb Space Telescope's gold primary mirror, fully assembled at NASA Goddard
NASA / Chris Gunn (public domain) · Wikimedia Commons
Shake, Rattle and Roll: James Webb Telescope Components Pass Tests
NASA/JPL-Caltech · NASA Image Library

Images from open archives · credit shown per image