NASA unveils 1st image from world’s most powerful space telescope

«We're looking back more than 13 billion years,» NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told an event at the White House to reveal what the U.S. space agency described as the first of the «deepest and sharpest» infrared images of the distant universe to date from the James Webb Space Telescope.

«Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. And that light that you are seeing on one of those little specks has been traveling for over 13 billion years,» he added. The history of the universe stands at 13.8 billion years.

The JWST, which was launched from French Guiana in South America in December, is an infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror, made up of 18 hexagonal-shaped mirror segments.

According to the U.S. space agency, a telescope's sensitivity depends on the size of the mirror area that collects light from the objects being observed, and a mirror this large has never before been launched into space.

The newly unveiled image showed a cluster of galaxies called SMACS 0723. Over the coming days, NASA will publish additional images.

The $10 billion telescope is part of an international program led by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration with the European and Canadian space agencies.

The Webb telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that was launched in 1990. While the Hubble telescope observes the universe in visible and ultraviolet light, the JWST focuses on infrared, a wavelength important for peering through gas and dust to see distant objects, according to NASA.