Webb, who was the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968 during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The primary contractor for the project was Northrop Grumman. The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland managed telescope development, while the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University operates Webb. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) led Webb's design and development and partnered with two main agencies: the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The telescope's first image was released to the public on 11 July 2022. In January 2022 it arrived at its destination, a solar orbit near the Sun–Earth L 2 Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 mi) from Earth. The Webb was launched on 25 December 2021 on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana.

This enables investigations across many fields of astronomy and cosmology, such as observation of the first stars and the formation of the first galaxies, and detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets. Its high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy.

Reflector human design