The James Webb Space Telescope, launched on Christmas Day, is now in orbit 1.5 million km from Earth, and is expected to start collecting data sometime this summer.

Newfoundlander Bethany Downer is the Chief Science Communications Officer for the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes for the European Space Agency.

She says the James Webb Space Telescope is the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been collecting spectacular images for more than 30 years, and will work in concert with Hubble, fixing its gaze into deep space.

Downer says Webb will be looking back in time, approximately 13.5 billion years, to try to capture some of the earliest galaxies in the universe.

She says Webb will be using an infrared camera to peer “behind stars and dust that otherwise Hubble would not be able to look past.”