The mass of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is about half that of the Hubble Space Telescope. Webb has a 6.5 m (21 ft)-diameter gold-coated beryllium primary mirror made up of 18 separate hexagonal mirrors. … See more

Background (development to 2003)
Discussions of a Hubble follow-on started in the 1980s, but serious planning began in the early 1990s. The Hi-Z telescope concept was … See more

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), in Baltimore, Maryland, on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University, was selected in 2003 as the Science and Operations Center (S&OC) for Webb with an initial budget of US$162.2 million … See more

Webb observing time is allocated through a General Observers (GO) program, a Guaranteed Time Observations (GTO) program, and a … See more

The desire for a large infrared space telescope traces back decades. In the United States, the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (later called the Spitzer Space Telescope) was planned while the Space Shuttle was in development, and the potential for … See more

The James Webb Space Telescope has four key goals:
• to search for light from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the universe after the Big Bang See more

Launch
The launch (designated Ariane flight VA256) took place as scheduled at 12:20 UTC on 25 … See more