[Dan Clery] It was such a high profile and expensive mission.
They just couldn't afford to fail.
[Marcia Rieke] Something like 10,000 people in 14 different countries have contributed to making the project happen.
[Dan Clery] The Breakthrough of the Year is a prize where we pick the bit of science that has made the biggest impact that year.
The topic we decided on for this year is the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST as we normally call it.
It sees the universe in an entirely new way.
[Dan Clery] They first started talking about what the next mission would be back in 1989. So that was before Hubble even left the ground.
[Announcer] The Hubble Space Telescope, our window on the universe.
[Dan Clery] That really solidified some years later when Hubble first created a deep field image.
They found that this empty bit of sky was full of galaxies, and they realized they could see much further back into the history of the universe than people had thought.
