This includes some of the first stars ever born, the most distant galaxies, and curious planets in the cosmos.

"It's really cool," marveled Chen, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, an organization that will run the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST.

JWST, originally dubbed the "Next Generation Space Telescope" in the 1990s, will join the legendary Hubble Space Telescope in capturing clear views of the universe from space.

Over the three decades it's orbited 340 miles above Earth, Hubble has provided unprecedented, brilliant views of the cosmos, galaxies, and planets.

Capturing more light is critical for observing the earliest stars and galaxies that formed in the universe, over 13 billion years ago.

If all goes as planned, JWST will see light that's nearly 13.7 billion years old, when the earliest stars and planets started to form.

Hubble largely views light that humans can see (aka "visible light").

JWST is specialized to observe one of these, called "infrared," which allows astronomers to see vastly more stars and planets.

Infrared has longer wavelengths than visible light, so the light waves don't get scattered as much (and obscured) by particles in the universe.

What's more, viewing extremely distant galaxies and stars is made much easier (or at times possible) by seeing them in infrared light.

"This can make distant objects very dim (or invisible) at visible wavelengths of light, because that light reaches us as infrared light," writes NASA.

But JWST's infrared views make the invisible visible.

The telescope carries an instrument called a spectrometer that can reveal what particles are composed of, based on how light reacts with them.