The world’s biggest space telescope is ready for blast-off in the hunt for alien life and the origins of the universe
Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope is dubbed Super Hubble as it is three times larger than its predecessor and 100 times more powerful thanks to its vast gold-plated mirror
THE biggest space telescope ever built has been completed - ready to blast into orbit to search for alien life.
Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is three times larger than its predecessor the Hubble telescope and 100 times more powerful thanks to its vast gold-plated mirror.
After testing it will be blasted into orbit 930,000 miles from Earth from where it can peer into the depths of the cosmos free of our atmosphere.
One of its tasks will be to reveal more planets outside our solar system that could be home to extraterrestrials.
Photos released by Nasa show the huge probe - dubbed Super-Hubble - standing in a cavernous "clean room" at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, US.
The massive primary mirror, stretching 21ft across, is made up of 18 hexagons each the size of a coffee table and weighing 46 lbs.
The beryllium components are coated with a fine film of vaporised gold to bounce infrared light into the sensor equipment.
"Thousands of people, for almost two decades, accomplished the construction of the telescope element of the largest space telescope ever created," Nasa said.
Now the probe will go through rigorous tests to see if it can withstand a bone-shaking rocket blast-off with no distortion in its vision.
Cryogenic tests at the Johnson Space Center in Houston will see how it copes in the freezing vacuum of space.
It will then be transported to California where it will be combined with its sun shield and "spacecraft bus" ready for liftoff in 2018.
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Nasa describes the JWST as a "time machine" because it will observe distant galaxies formed 13.5billion years ago - around 200million years after the Big Bang.
Unmatched infrared sensitivity will help astronomers understand how galaxies assemble over billions of years.
The JWST will see behind cosmic dust clouds - which block visible light - to see where stars and planetary systems are being born.
And it may even find signs of the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe.
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