Dec. 25 (UPI) -- NASA and the European Space Agency successfully launched the largest, most powerful telescope ever, the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, from South America on Christmas morning.

"Liftoff from a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself," a NASA announcer said as the Ariane 5 rocket lifted off as planned at 7:20 a.m. EST from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.

"James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe, punching a hole through the clouds 20 seconds into the flight."

NASA has designed James Webb to surpass the Hubble Space Telescope with infrared vision that can peer 13.5 billion years into the universe's past -- seeing the light of the first stars and galaxies as they formed after the Big Bang.

Here it is: humanity’s final look at @NASAWebb as it heads into deep space to answer our biggest questions. Alone in the vastness of space, Webb will soon begin an approximately two-week process to deploy its antennas, mirrors, and sunshield. #UnfoldTheUniverse pic.twitter.com/DErMXJhNQd
— NASA (@NASA) December 25, 2021

After 25 minutes of the rocket's flight, launch announcers said it had functioned perfectly: "It's been a smooth ride. … Everything fell together on this Christmas Day to send a new present to the world's astronomers."

Cheers erupted in the mission control center as the telescope itself separated from the rocket's upper stage. The spacecraft's solar array extended on schedule about 33 minutes after launch, and Webb signaled that it was operating at full power.

This is an artist's illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope.

"There are no words to describe the emotion that is happening right now in the [mission control] fishbowl," Raphael Chevrier, a manager with launch company Arianespace, said on a live broadcast. "All I can say is good luck Webb and bring incredible data from the universe."

The launch brings to a close decades of efforts and repeated delays to get Webb into space as Northrop Grumman-built the giant telescope in California beginning in 2004.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson thanked the European and Canadian space agency's for their contributions to the effort.

The James Webb Space Telescope is shown during a test deployment of its primary mirror at Northrop Grumman in California in March 2020.

"It's going to take us back to the very beginning of the universe. We are going to discover incredible things that we never imagined," Nelson said.

The new observatory, however, still has 29 days of the most difficult and complex in-space deployment and unfolding process ever attempted, according to NASA. The observatory and its tennis court-sized sun shield must unfurl through over 300 deployment procedures.

In addition to the earliest stars, scientists eagerly await the powerful new tool to study exoplanets, pulsars, black holes and other space objects.

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