NASA launches James Webb Space Telescope

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, a revolutionary $9 billion instrument, is scheduled to launch on Saturday from French Guiana, ushering in a new era of astronomical research.

The powerful infrared telescope, which NASA has billed as the premier science observatory for the next decade, will blast off into space on an Ariane 5 rocket at 13:20 CET from the European Space Agency's launch base in French Guiana.

If all goes according to plan, the 6,350-kilogram instrument will be released from the rocket after a 26-minute ride into space.

The Webb telescope will then take a month to coast to its destination in solar orbit about a million miles from Earth, or about four times farther than the Moon.

For comparison, Webb's predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, orbits Earth from a distance of 340 miles, entering and exiting the planet's shadow every 90 minutes.

The telescope, named after the man who oversaw NASA during the 1960s, is about 100 times more sensitive than Hubble and is expected to profoundly change our understanding of the universe and humanity's place in it.

Webb will primarily observe the universe in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to peer through clouds of gas and dust where stars are born, whereas Hubble operated primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.