James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s successor to the famous Hubble telescope, launched on 25 December 2021 set out on a mission to study the earliest stars and peer back farther into the universe's past than ever before. 

Webb is currently on a 29-day trip to its observing spot, Lagrange point 2 (L2), nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million km).  

The L2 point of the Earth-Sun system is ideal for astronomy because a spacecraft is close enough to readily communicate with Earth, can keep Sun, Earth and Moon behind the spacecraft for solar power and (with appropriate shielding) provides a clear view of deep space for telescopes. The L1 and L2 points are unstable on a time scale of approximately 23 days, which requires satellites orbiting these positions to undergo the regular course and attitude corrections, as mentioned by NASA earlier.

A joint effort with ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency, the Webb observatory is NASA’s revolutionary flagship mission to seek the light from the first galaxies in the early universe and to explore our own solar system, as well as planets orbiting other stars, called exoplanets.   

“The James Webb Space Telescope represents the ambition that NASA and our partners maintain to propel us forward into the future,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The promise of Webb is not what we know we will discover; it’s what we don’t yet understand or can’t yet fathom about our universe. I can’t wait to see what it uncovers!”

Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than Hubble and is expected to transform scientists’ understanding of the universe and our place in it. One of the major boosters is the capability of the telescope to view the cosmos in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to gaze through clouds of gas and dust where stars are born. At the same time, Hubble has operated primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.  

Webb was developed at the cost of $8.8 billion, with operational expenses projected to bring its total price tag to about $9.66 billion, far higher than planned.  

One can also find the current location of Webb here.