Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope, initiated to give the globe a descried of the universe as it prevailed when the first galaxies were devised, was instigated by a rocket early on December 25 from South America's northeastern coast, apertured a new epoch of astronomy.

The thoroughgoing $9-billion infrared telescope, commended by NASA as the top-tier space-science planetarium of the next decade, was carried a lot inside the cargo bay of an Arian5 rocket that blasted off at about 7.20 a.m. EST (5.50 p.m. IST) from the European Space Agency's (ESA) launch base in French Guiana.

The unblemished Christmas Day launch, with a countdown conducted in French, was executed live on a joint NASA-ESA webcast.

Subsequently, during a 27-minute ride into space, the 14,000-pound equipment was unshackled from the upper stage of the French-built rocket and intended to cautiously unfurl to nearly the size of a tennis court over the next 13 days as it ascends onward on its own.

Live video apprehended by the camera mounted on the rocket's upper stage showed the Webb operating persuasively away high above the Earth as it was eliminated. Flight comptrollers confirmed moments later that Webb's power supply was up and running.

Cruising through space for two more weeks, the Webb telescope will reach the end of the line in solar orbit about 1.6 million km from Earth - about fourfold farther away than the moon. And Webb's special orbital path will keep it in incessant symmetry with the Earth as the planet and telescope circle the sun in tandem.

By differentiation, Webb's 30-year-old forerunner, the Hubble Space Telescope, orbits the Earth from about 550 km away, proceeding in and out of the planet's shadow every 90 minutes.

Named after the man, who supervise NASA through most of its impressionable decade of the 1960s, Webb is about 100 times more fragile than Hubble and is contemplated to revolutionize scientists' understanding of the universe and our place in it.

Webb principally will view the cosmos in the infrared spectrum, authorizing it to gaze through clouds of gas and dust where stars are being born, while Hubble has functioned predominantly at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.