Arianespace Launches the James Webb Space Telescope

Credit: (NASA/Chris Gunn)

On Saturday, December 25 at 7:20 am ET (12:20 UTC), Arianespace launched NASA's James Webb Space Telescope atop an Ariane 5 ECA rocket from ELA-3 at the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. This was numbered Arianespace flight VA256. Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, with the capability of seeing back in time just after the Big Bang! For example, a patch of space that took Hubble a month to photograph, would only take a day for Webb. Webb will take the place of the Edwin Hubble Space Telescope that's been operating for over 30 years since its launch in 1990 on the space shuttle. Webb and Hubble are planned to work together though for at least a few years. Unlike Hubble that is in low earth orbit, Webb will go to the Sun-Earth L2 point, which means that it will be in the same orbit around the Sun as the Earth but one quarter of Earth's orbit away from us. Because of the long time it will take for Webb to get to L2, we won't get pictures from Webb until Spring or Summer 2022. Webb is a joint project between NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency), and CSA (the Canadian Space Agency). This was the 112th Ariane 5 launch, 289th Arianespace mission, and the 138th orbital attempt of 2021.