The James Webb Space Telescope Has Been Performing As Well As Astronomers Had Hoped

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Perrin states, “There’s no way to look at these data without being excited about the scientific possibilities that are open up here.”

It will take weeks of engineering to get the telescope ready for science.

It should be able, starting this summer, to gather light that shows how some first galaxies appeared just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. The telescope will also be used for probing the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars, looking for chemical signatures that could indicate the existence of life.