- In the month since the James Webb Space Telescope released its first images, it's captured brand-new views of the cosmos.
- The $10-billion space telescope launched in December 2021 and arrived at its destination beyond the moon's orbit in January.
- Webb is able to cut through cosmic dust, letting astronomers see farther into the past than ever before.
The James Webb Space Telescope only been fully operational for a month, but in that time, it's allowed astronomers to peer father into the universe than ever before and changed how we see the cosmos.
Often described as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb launched on December 25, 2021, after more than two decades of development. Since that time, the $10 billion telescope has traveled more than 1 million miles from Earth and is now stationed in a gravitationally stable orbit, collecting infrared light. By gathering infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, Webb is able to cut through cosmic dust and see far into the past, to the first 400 million years after the Big Bang.