earlier i spoke to our science correspondentjonathan amos about this latest development. haven't done is lock it in place. this mirror, it is so big, six and a half metres across. it went into space like a drop leaf table. so two sides of it were swept back. they had to open it outto make you full monolithic mirror, if you like. the segments that came out have to be locked into position. if they're not, every time they turn the telescope will start flapping around. you cannot image of the cosmos like that. we are still waiting for the latches to go into place. and then we have success and then i can pour myself a drink and relax on a saturday. ok, fairenough. no, no, you have to tell it as it is. that is yourjob. we cross fingers that all happens and it works as it should. give us a sense of what they are hoping for, what they hope ultimately this can tell us that previous telescopes have not been able to. do you remember we had the hubble space telescope 30 ago, it has completely transformed our view of the cosmos. it will stop working in a few years. we have this succes

earlier i spoke to our science correspondentjonathan amos about the significance of this moment.cope 30 years ago, it has completely transformed our view of the cosmos. it will stop working in a few years. we have this successor, james webb. it is bigger, much, much bigger. it can see deeper into the cosmos and therefore, further back in time as well. they hope right to that moment, just a couple of hundred million years after the big bang, when the very first stars switch on. there was darkness and then the stars ignite. why is that important? when the big bang happened, we only had three chemical elements. hydrogen, helium and lithium. everything else, all of the other chemical elements had to be forged in the nuclear reactions in stars. the carbon that makes up your body, the phosphorus in your dna, the nitrogen in earth's atmosphere, the silicon in the rocks, the silicon in the fibre—optic cables that are bringing the pictures to me here in cambridge, to you in london, all of that chemistry had to be made in those first stars and in their descendants. so it is a really key mo

i'm joined now by our science correspondentjonathan amos.e whole of her interview. just reminds us how exciting this whole project really is. reminds us how exciting this whole preject really le— pro'ect really is. yes, i'm going to be project really is. yes, i'm going to be a little bit _ project really is. yes, i'm going to be a little bit of _ project really is. yes, i'm going to be a little bit of a _ project really is. yes, i'm going to be a little bit of a misery - project really is. yes, i'm going to be a little bit of a misery guts - project really is. yes, i'm going to be a little bit of a misery guts if. be a little bit of a misery guts if thatis be a little bit of a misery guts if that is possible. we have heard from an asset that they have deployed the mirror, what they have not done yet is lock it in place. so this mirror, it is so big, 6.5 metres across, it went into space like a drop leaf table. the two sides of it were swept back, they had to open it out to make a full monolithic mirror, but those segments that came out have

i'm joined now by our science correspondentjonathan amos. doing? yes, the james webb space telescope, the successor to hubble that was launched 30 years ago, hubble reaching its end of the lifetime, so we need a new big telescope in space, one that can do next—generation observations. it was launched two weeks ago on christmas day, but it is so big, they had to fold it up to get it into the rocket and into space. they have spent the past two weekss unfolding it, which is an extraordinary exercise in itself. many things could have gone wrong. many people worried that it would not unfold properly and we have arrived today at the very last deployment which is this giant six and a half metres across mirror. 0ne and a half metres across mirror. one side came out yesterday, they are opening the other side now. i can tell you that the last latch has been released and it will drive the motors very shortly and they will put it into position and they will then have to latch it down in the new position. then we have got a new telescope in space. we hav