NASA officials drew back curtain to a display of luminous images

On Tuesday, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) draws back the curtain on billions of years of cosmic evolution with the inaugural batch of photos from the largest, most powerful observatory ever launched to space, saying the luminous imagery showed the telescope exceeds expectations.

The first full-color, high-resolution pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope, designed to peer farther than before with greater clarity to the dawn of the universe, were hailed by NASA as milestones marking a new era of astronomical exploration.

Nearly two decades in the making and developed under contract for NASA by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp, the $9 billion infrared telescope was launched on Dec. 25, 2021. A month later, it reached its destination in solar orbit nearly 1 million miles from Earth.

According to Reuters, With Webb finely tuned after months spent remotely aligning its mirrors and calibrating its instruments, scientists will embark on a competitively selected agenda exploring the evolution of galaxies, the life cycle of stars, and atmospheres of distant exoplanets, and moons of our outer solar system.

“All of us are just blown away,” Amber Straughn, Webb deputy project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said among a panel of experts who briefed reporters following the big reveal.

“Whoops and hollers from a sprightly “cheer team” welcomed some 300 scientists, telescope engineers, politicians, and senior officials from NASA and its international partners into a packed and auditorium at Goddard for the official unveiling,” a source as per Reuters.

“I didn’t know I was coming to a pep rally,” NASA Administrator James Nelson said from the stage, enthusing that Webb’s “every image is a discovery.”