Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine

Thomas Zurbuchen is the head of science at NASA,

or Dr. Z, as we can also call you.

The day has come.

All these decades, all this time,

all these people working on this telescope,

and here we are, minutes to launch.

Ten, nine, eight...

...three, two, one, liftoff!

We have been given the go-ahead to begin commanding

a release of the forward latches.

We're seeing both blankets unfurl on the solar array.

Looks good.

I want to wish Hubble its own set of adventures,

that it may unlock further mysteries of the universe.

We want to look out into the vastness of space

and back to the beginnings of time to answer the questions,

"How did, and how do, galaxies form?"

"Are there other habitable planets outside our solar system?"

"Is life unique to planet Earth?"

Hubble and ground-based telescopes have given us an important start.

But we must go farther,

and the Next Generation Space Telescope,

NGST, will be the next great step taken.

Navigation confirmed that the parachute has deployed

and we are seeing significant deceleration.

Oh, it's beautiful, Mike, it really is.

They've got the flag up now, and you can see the stars and stripes.

This institute will be managing a telescope

with a launch projected for 2007.

The target price for doing this will be 500 million dollars.

Mr. Howard, did you ever see the movie called The Money Pit?

Yes, absolutely.

I think the standard line in that movie was, ''It's only two more weeks.''

Mm-hmm. Now, how can we justify this to our constituents?

We are just about 12 hours from launching. Fingers crossed that the weather holds,

and we'll be able to launch this telescope tomorrow morning.

I can't believe... I can't believe that we're almost here.

I'm so excited. I can't wait to get this telescope into space.

Seven, six, five,

four, three, two, one, liftoff.

Ignition.

Liftoff.

All propulsion parameters are normal. Trajectory is normal.

The coolest thing of the decade, possibly the century,

is about to happen.

The successor to the Hubble,

three times as large and way more technologically advanced,

is about to be launched. I'm going to start crying.

Feliz Navidad. I got up at 4:50 a.m. this morning

to watch the JWST launch.

Just praying to all the science gods that everything goes without a hitch,

and that in six months, we'll be able to get this wonderful data.