The James Webb Space Telescope will lift-off a little later than expected.
On Saturday, NASA confirmed the space science observatory will launch on Christmas Eve from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. JWST has experienced multiple postponements since 2018, due to various technical issues as well as roadblocks caused by the pandemic. NASA, which leads the project alongside the Canadian and European space agencies, had originally planned to send JWST into orbit on Dec. 18, before pushing the launch date to Dec. 22.
“The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world’s premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021,” NASA wrote in a blog. “Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.”
NASA said the teams on Friday successfully completed a readiness review of the observatory inside the Ariane 5 rocket, which will launch it into space. It’ll take roughly 30 days for Webb to reach its home at the second Lagrange Point located about 1 million miles away from Earth.
A second review is planned for Tuesday. If weather conditions or technical issues force another delay, the agencies will look to Christmas Day or Dec. 26 as possible launch dates.
The $10 billion project is said to be the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope.
“There’s so much riding on this,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told the Associated Press, “opening up just all kinds of new understanding and revelations about the universe … All I want for Christmas are not my two front teeth, but for the success of JWST.”
The launch will take place at 7:20 a.m. ET Friday, and can be live-streamed via NASA’s YouTube channel.
