The Hubble Space Telescope’s heir is finally on the brink of flight. It will be the biggest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever to leave the planet, elaborate in its design and ambitious in its scope. At a budget-busting $10 billion USD, it will also be the most expensive. The James Webb Space Telescope will seek out the faint, twinkling light from the first stars, and galaxies, providing a glimpse into cosmic creation. Its infrared eyes will also stare down black holes and hunt for alien worlds, scouring the planets’ atmospheres for water, and other possible hints of life. “First and foremost, it will detect the first galaxies in the universe, and it will characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets around other stars,” says Klaus Pontoppidan, a project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Webb is a huge telescope—its mirror is the size of …