The James Webb has literally gone further than any similar instruments used by NASA before. It was the first time we were able to see the faraway galaxy. That first image, unveiled by US President Joe Biden and NASA’s chief Bill Nelson, showed a 4.6 billion-year-old galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723. A few months later, it was sending back its first images, released on 12 July, 2022.
It was launched on Christmas Day in 2021 and reached its final destination in space, the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, in January 2022. The telescope, the result of nearly three decades of work with a price tag of €9.5 billion, has been able to show us the universe like no other instrument before, allowing us to peer at faraway galaxies and peek into how stars are born and how they die. It’s been one year since NASA’s pioneering James Webb Telescope sent back to Earth its first stunning images from outer space.