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

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/15/ [login to see] /gregory-robinson-nasa-james-webb-telescope-director
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.