// block 715694 · space · 25 December 2021
The James Webb telescope launched
The moment this block marks: the liftoff of Ariane 5 from Kourou, 09:20 local time, 25 December 2021, 12:20:00 UTC. The first block mined after it is block 715,694, 25 December 2021, 12:24:07 UTC.
On the morning of 25 December 2021, an Ariane 5 rocket lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 09:20 local time, carrying the James Webb Space Telescope. Built by NASA with the European and Canadian space agencies, Webb is an infrared observatory with a primary mirror 6.5 metres across, the scientific successor to the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes.
The telescope was too large to fly open. Folded to fit under the fairing of the rocket, it faced a long sequence of unfolding once in space, and a journey of about a month to its post near the second Lagrange point, some 1.5 million kilometres from Earth on the side away from the Sun.
Ariane 5 flew a special roll to shield Webb from the Sun's radiation and released it after 27 minutes of flight. A camera on the upper stage watched the telescope drift away, and within half an hour of launch its solar array had unfolded and was providing power. ESA, which supplied the rocket, had also built two of Webb's four science instruments.
The first block mined after the liftoff, block 715,694, came four minutes into the flight, at 12:24:07 UTC, shortly after the rocket had shed its fairing, with Webb still fixed to the upper stage. Its hash, like every hash, can be checked on any node.
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