NASA Telescope Launches Long-Awaited Voyage ‘Back to the Birth of the Universe’

After years of delays, NASA successfully launched its super-powerful James Webb telescope into space from French Guiana on Christmas morning. “Liftoff from a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe,” NASA said as the telescope lifted off at 7:20 a.m. ET. Webb, the world’s most complex space observatory, will study exoplanets and head into parts of the universe never before explored. Astronomers have discovered more than 4,000 planets outside our solar system—so-called exoplanets—in the years that Webb has been under construction, and that’s believed to be the tip of the iceberg. One big question Webb hopes to answer is whether any of these exoplanets harbor life.