The James Webb Space Telescope: The History of the Most Powerful Telescope in Space

On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on the Space Shuttle Program's 35th mission, but this was no ordinary mission. In its payload bay, Discovery was carrying the Hubble Space Telescope, with the objective of putting the telescope into orbit. The Hubble telescope, working in space less than 400 miles above the Earth's surface, produced photos of galaxies previously unseen as they existed only 500 million years before the “Big Bang.” It was for...