FOG BLOG US NEWS LOG: JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE LAUNCHED INTO SPACE TO STUDY THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launches on epic mission to study early universe...NASA just got a $10 billion space telescope for Christmas.

An Ariane 5 rocket launched today (Dec. 25) from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT; 9:20 a.m. local time in Kourou), carrying the highly anticipated, long-delayed James Webb Space Telescope — and the hopes and dreams of countless astronomers, astrophysicists and planetary scientists around the world — into the final frontier.

The huge telescope will peer at the universe's first stars and galaxies, sniff the atmospheres of nearby alien planets and perform a variety of other high-profile, high-impact work over the next five to 10 years, if all goes according to plan. .......The space telescope soared into a cloudy sky over Kourou and separated from its its Arianespace-built rocket about a half-hour later. Cheers erupted out at launch control as live views of Webb floating away and unfolding its solar array reached Earth. .......

"Go, Webb, go!" rang one cheer from an Arianespace flight controller on NASA's live broadcast....."This is a one-of-a-kind" mission, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told Space.com last week. "It is the most advanced technology that is going to, if successful, open up secrets of the universe that will be just stupendous, if not almost overwhelming, [providing a] quantum leap of understanding of who we are, how we got here, what we are and how did it all evolve."

"If successful" is a required caveat for every mission. But stressing it seems especially necessary with Webb, given the observatory's outsized importance and intricacy.

Webb is "the most complex thing, by far, that NASA has ever done," Webb Deputy Senior Project Scientist Jonathan Gardner, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told Space.com. "It's arguably the biggest pure science project that the United States has ever done."