Articles by William Harwood

The first images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope were unveiled Friday, a “selfie” showing the observatory’s 21.3-foot-wide primary mirror and a mosaic showing multiple images of a nondescript star being used to align the 18 segments making up the main mirror.

The James Webb Space Telescope slipped into orbit around a point in space nearly a million miles from Earth Monday where it can capture light from the first stars and galaxies to form in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

Thirty days outbound from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope will slip into its parking orbit a million miles away Monday, an ideal spot to scan the heavens in search of faint infrared light from the first generation of stars and galaxies.

In another major milestone for the James Webb Space Telescope, a motor-driven tripod unfolded as planned Wednesday, moving a 2.4-foot-wide secondary mirror into position to reflect collected starlight back down to the instruments that will study it.

Engineers activating the James Webb Space Telescope decided Sunday to hold off tightening up the observatory’s critical sunshade to allow more time to check out the performance of its power systems and overall behavior now that several major deployments are complete.

Sixty years after her father became the first American in space, Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, rocketed out of the lower atmosphere Saturday, joining ABC TV host Michael Strahan and four others for a thrilling 10-minute climb to space and back.

Sixty years after NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space, his oldest daughter plans to blast off Saturday on a sub-orbital flight of her own, joining former NFL star and TV host Michael Strahan, two entrepreneurs and a father-and-son duo aboard a Blue Origin New Shepard spacecraft.