An awesome new window on the universe opens wide this week on Planetary Radio.

One, two, three. Go with!

Welcome. I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of a human adventure across our solar system and beyond.

After decades of work, after threats to the project's existence, and after a million mile journey across space, the JWST has begun its historic work.

On this special edition of Planetary Radio, we will hear some of what took place as those first five images were released.

Bill and I will share his reaction, and we'll enjoy an extended conversation with Tom Green, one of the people who helped build the telescope, and who now looks forward to using it to examine exoplanets as never before.

With all that's ahead of us, we'll forego headlines from the downlink, the Society's free weekly newsletter, but you can find it at planetary.org slash downlink.

Never fear Bruce Betts will be along as usual with an offbeat new space trivia contest that will tie the new telescope to a defunct hamburger, seriously.

It's the evening of Monday, July 11, 2022.

President Joe Biden is about to reveal the very first science image from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Six and a half months ago, a rocket launched from Earth carrying the world's newest, most powerful deep space telescope on a journey, one million miles into the cosmos.

First of all, that blows my mind, a million miles into the cosmos, along the way unfolding itself, deploying a mirror 21 feet wide for science and technology, for astronomy and space exploration, for America and all of humanity.

You know, as an international collaboration, this telescope embodies how America leads the world not by the example of our power, but the power of our example.

A partnership with others, it symbolizes the relentless spirit of American ingenuity, and it shows what we can achieve, what more we can discover, not just about distant places, but about our very own planet and climate like NASA's Earth Systems Observatory that we launched last year.

And now let's take a look at the very first image from this miraculous telescope.

NASA Administrator Nelson, I'm going to turn this over to you, so you please tell us about what we're seeing.

Mr. President, if you held a grain of sand on the tip of your finger at arm's length, that is the part of the universe that you're seeing, just one little speck of the universe.

You're seeing galaxies that are shining around other galaxies whose light has been bent.

You know, a hundred years ago, Mr. President, Madame Vice President, a hundred years ago, we thought there was only one galaxy.

Now, the number is unlimited.

And in our galaxy, we have billions of stars or suns, and there are billions of galaxies with billions of stars and suns, and we're getting our first glimpse, as you said, Mr. President, we're looking back more than 13 billion years.

And by the way, we're going back further because this is just the first image.

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