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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was successfully launched into space on the 25th of December 2021. Once operational, expected in May 2022, JWST is intended to succeed the Hubble as NASA's flagship mission in astrophysics.

It is the most advanced telescope ever built and took 25 years to make, with an estimated overall cost of US$9.7 billion. The telescope is designed to see deep into space, using the infrared spectrum. This is because the most distant objects in space are travelling away from earth, due to the expansion of the universe, this means that the light emitted from these objects is stretched and becomes ‘red shifted’. The JWST is designed specifically to capture these distant beams of light, allowing us not only to see farther than ever before, but also to look back in time. This is because the speed of light is finite, and the distances across which the JWST will be looking, are hundreds of thousands of ‘light years’ across, anabling us to see the first forming galaxies and stars from early in the universes history.

Scientist are also planning to use the telescope to observe the atmospheres of distant planets, to see if they can detect artificial elements in the atmosphere which do not occur naturally. These could possibly be industrial by-products, indicating intelligent alien life and civilisations.

Needless to say, the JWST is expected to bring many new discoveries and remarkable new images of deep space that have never been seen before.