The complete story of how the James Webb Space Telescope survived twenty-five years of near-cancellation to become the most ambitious instrument humans have ever launched

The James Webb Space Telescope cost roughly $10 billion, launched on Christmas Day 2021, and has produced science that, according to Space Telescope Science Institute project scientist Macarena Garcia Marin, is delivering cutting-edge results across every field of astronomy. The number that matters more than the price tag, though, is twenty-five. That is roughly how many years the project spent under the threat of cancellation, schedule slippage, congressional hearings, and engineering crises...