this is a successor to the hubbell telescope, which was impressive and important. stephen: and a bag of chips. >> by the way, you actually said it unfolded. many people don't realize this telescope is way bigger than the fairing that launched it. the engineers said let's figure out how to fold the telescope, stick it in the fairing and unfold it a million miles out from where it's parked. >> stephen: it looks like a flower, it ooks like a stamen. >> we were shocked for it having met the specs. because there were so many ways that could have failed that when it met what it was designed to do, we were all-- we were shocked. >> stephen: there were hundreds of single-point failures. if this thing goes wrong, the whole thing fails. >> yeah, yeah. so we were delighted. and it did exactly what we expected it to do. so it looked at the edge of the universe, finding galaxies being born. and you could-- because it's infrared, it peers through nearby gas clouds. stars are made of gas. they're made from gas clouds. so when you peer in, you see the stellar nursery that lurks wi