How the son of sharecroppers helped send the world's most powerful telescope to space

Then-NASA Deputy Associate Administrator Gregory Robinson stands with other officials to watch a spacecraft launch at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in September 2016. (NASA via Getty Images)

NASA released the first batch of images from the James Webb telescope this week, wowing the world with never-before-seen views of ancient and distant galaxies.

The approximately $10 billion telescope was decades in the making, a partnership with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency that involved some 20,000 collaborators across 29 countries and 14 U.S. states. It finally launched in December 2021 after a long string of setbacks and delays that led some astronomers to fear it might never get off the ground.