NASA Releases First Image from James Webb Space Telescope — Here’s What You Have to Know

NASA and U.S. President Joe Biden shared on Monday the first colored image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detailing the deepest view ever made on the cosmos.

Called "Webb's First Deep Field," the image shows the deepest and sharpest, high-resolution image of the distant universe ever seen, NASA said. This image reveals of a cluster of galaxies known as SMACS 0723, which first came into existence 4.6 billion years ago. The total mass of these captured galaxies presents itself as a gravitational lens that magnifies the farther celestial bodies pictured in the background.

Image Shows Never-Before-Seen Features in Galaxies, Leads to More Studies on History of the Universe

A number of these galaxies have distinct features that have been unknown previously. Astronomers will study these never before seen galactic features to discover more about the history of our universe. NASA, however, notes thst Webb's First Deep Field do not show the earliest look at the universe. The U.S. space agency said other microwave telescopes, such as the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) had taken snapshots that are closer to the Big Bang, but was not able to provide the view of stars and galaxies as those captured by Webb.

How and When to View Rest of Unprecedented Webb Images

The image Biden and NASA shared on Monday is merely the first of several photos NASA is set to share this week from the JWST. The rest of the initial batch of images will be seen Wednesday at 9:45PM ET when NASA hosts a press conference with Webb leadership.

Live coverage of the event starts at 10:30AM ET on NASA TV, YouTube, Twitter and Twitch.

Long, Rough Road for James Webb Space Telescope

This milestone comes after a long, rough road for the deep space telescope. When it was first announced, the Webb was firt planned to launch in 2007. However, following a redesign in 2005, the U.S. space agency completed work on the project in 2016 and announced that the spacecraft would be ready to launch by 2018.

By the next year, NASA completed assembly of the JWST, but when the pandemic hit in 2020, further delays in testing and shipping happened. These delays caused the JWST project cost to balloon to $10 billion.

NASA then finally launched the JWST on December 25, 2021. on a European Space Agency (ESA) Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, and entered orbit in January 2022. As of July 2022, JWST is intended to succeed the Hubble as NASA's flagship mission in astrophysics.

Its naming was also saddled with controversy after the deep space telescope was named after the former agency administrator James Webb, who, after leading NASA's effort in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs, worked at the U.S. State Department at a time when it fired hundreds of gay and lesbian workers. In September last year, amid calls to rename the project, NASA said it did not plan to change the name of the telescope.