President Joe Biden will receive a briefing from NASA at 5:30 p.m. to preview the first images from the Webb Space Telescope, the highest-resolution images of the infrared universe ever captured.
The scope is currently in orbit nearly 1 million miles from Earth and is powerful enough to look backward, essentially through time, closer to the origins of the universe than mankind has ever gazed before.
The new telescope will allow scientists and astronomers to see far enough away to almost catch up with its farthest edge. There, they hope to see the first luminous objects formed after the Big Bang as they continue to race away from us.
The Webb Telescope will also get good looks at planets outside our solar system and far-off stars just being born. The 13,000-pound apparatus was launched in a joint mission between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency last Christmas.
BDN’s Troy R. Bennett contributed to this report.
