virtually. take me back to the emotion that you felt. i was just thrilled that it was like that and not surprised a bit. of course, we planned and we reversed and we did everything necessary to make it work. so i wasn t surprised, but i was certainly thrilled. it s wonderful. we want to show video now of the telescope detaching from the orion 5 rocket. the telescope has done so many things successfully already, talking about the incredible detachment, the mid course correction. it s going to deploy antennas, mirrors and that huge sun shield over the next two weeks. talk about the accomplishments, but also, hate to be debbie downer, how critical are the next few days? everything can go wrong. we ve rehearsed and practiced and argued and fautd. this is a thing that s befr been
punching a hole through the clouds. 20 seconds into the flight. this is the james webb space telescope. it s a successor to hubble, but 100 times more powerful. after three decades in the making, and a cost of $10 billion, it s finally on its way. we ve never attempted anything like that in space before. we re going to be entering a whole new regime of astrophysics. a new frontier. and that is what gets so many of us excited about james webb space telescope. this space telescope is a feat of engineering. at its heart is a 6.5 metre wide mirror, made up of 18 hexagonal segments, each coated in a layer of gold. its size means it can detect the incredibly faint light coming from the most distant stars. it also has a huge sun shield, about the size of a tennis court. it s made up of five layers, each as thin as a human hair, and this protects the telescope from the heat and light of the sun. sitting a million miles
its size means it can detect the incredibly faint light coming from the most distant stars. it also has a huge sun shield, about the size of a tennis court. it s made up of five layers, each as thin as a human hair, and this protects the telescope from the heat and light of the sun. sitting a million miles away from the earth, the telescope will give us our deepest ever view of the cosmos. from seeing the birth of the very first stars and galaxies, to revealing new planets in far flung solar systems. what excites me is making discoveries, things we haven t thought about. and there s a whole history of astronomy that shows how, when we ve looked at the new universe in a new way, we discover things we hadn t thought about. and there s something really exciting about doing that. to get into space, the telescope is so big, it s been folded up to fit inside the rocket. the most challenging part
telescope ever sent into space. punching a hole through the clouds. 20 seconds into the flight. this is the james webb space telescope. it s a successor to hubble, but 100 times more powerful. after three decades in the making and a cost of $10 billion, it s finally on its way. we ve never attempted anything like that in space before. we re going to be entering a whole new regime of astrophysics. a new frontier. and that is what gets so many of us excited about james webb space telescope. this space telescope is a feat of engineering. at its heart is a 6.5 metre wide mirror, made up of 18 hexagonal segments, each coated in a layer of gold. its size means it can detect the incredibly faint light coming from the most distant stars. it also has a huge sun shield, about the size of a tennis court. it s made up of five layers,
and then you launch it. and first you have to deploy the sun shield so that you are protecting the telescope from the sun. which is huge. the sun shield will stretch out to be as big as a tennis court. and it will just then slowly sail away from us a million miles away and then slowly deploy these hexagonal shapes. this is the largest ever space telescope we ve ever launched. amazing. yeah. and we are about two minutes away. and if we do get countdown, i ll have to interrupt you. but i want to look at that it will study things like super massive black holes, dark matter of space, but also investigation get a a question that we ve been wondering for ages, are we alone. what are you most eager to learn? absolutely. it will usher in a new era for astronomy for sure. a big question is are we alone and how did we get here. so the galaxies you see today