On Christmas Day 2021 at 7:20 AM EST NASA's James Webb Space Telescope successfully launched from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, folded within the nose cone of an Ariane 5 rocket. The $10 billion observatory, the largest and most complex scientific probe ever sent into space, is bound for an orbit about 1 million miles from Earth. Once there Webb's mission is to explore the history of the cosmos by observing light from the first galaxies in the early universe. The probe's state-of-the-art instruments will provide unmatched resolution of these distant celestial objects. "The promise of Webb is not what we know we will discover; it's what we don't yet understand or can't yet fathom about our universe," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.