The James Webb Space Telescope, a NASA instrument designed to allow humankind's first glimpse of the infant universe as it existed when the earliest galaxies are believed to have formed, was set for launch on Saturday from the northeastern coast of South America, Trend reports citing Reuters.
The revolutionary $9 billion infrared telescope, hailed by NASA as the premiere space-science observatory of the next decade, was bundled inside the cargo bay of an Ariane 5 rocket poised for blastoff at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT) from the European Space Agency's (ESA) launch base in French Guiana.
If all goes as planned, the 14,000-pound instrument, which will unfurl to nearly the size of a tennis court, will be released from the French-built rocket after a 26-minute ride into space.
Over the following month, the Webb telescope will coast to its destination in solar orbit roughly 1 million miles from Earth - about four times farther away than the moon. Webb's special orbital path will keep it in constant alignment with Earth as the planet and telescope circle the sun in tandem.