More info on NASA’s website
For centuries astronomers have used telescopes to look into the night sky. In 1946 Lyman Spitzer, a prominent astrophysicist in his time, theorized that a telescope placed outside of Earth’s atmosphere would be able to collect much clearer data than telescopes on the surface of the planet. The logic behind his theory is that the atmosphere blocks many wavelengths of light, thus limiting what data earth-based telescopes can collect. Although the idea seemed outlandish at the time given their level of technology, Spitzer never lost faith and kept promoting the idea of space telescopes until technology caught up to his dreams. It took over 20 years for Spitzer’s dream of a space telescope to become reality, with the first American space telescope being completed in 1968.
Formally titled the James Webb Space Telescope, it is named in honor of James E. Webb, the administrator of NASA who oversaw the United States’ first manned missions outside our atmosphere. The primary mirror onboard is over 6.5 meters (or just over 21 feet) in diameter. With a projected launch date of spring 2019, JWST will be launched into an orbit of the Sun (not the Earth) about 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth’s surface. The goal of JWST is to provide astronomers with information they were previously unable to collect. The instruments onboard are so sensitive that they could sense the heat of a bumblebee if it were on the surface of the moon, and its picture will be so sharp you could make out the details of a penny from over 20 miles away. These instruments will be pointed at very faint galaxies in order to compare them to newer, brighter galaxies which will hopefully allow astronomers to learn how galaxies form. JWST will look at exoplanets and analyze their atmospheres in the hope of finding evidence of life on other planets. Finally, JWST will analyze infrared light in the universe to try and better understand what was happening at the very beginning of the universe. JWST represents a new age in astronomy: an age of extreme precision and unprecedented vision. Regardless of what JWST will find, astronomers around the globe are eagerly awaiting those first few pictures we will receive from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Jon's Astronomy Blog 
the James Webb Space Telescope is not only ground-breaking from a science standpoint, but it’s also hella innovative in the engineering sense. Once around the Sun it’ll unfurl from its compact form, and it has a high-tech heat management system to allow the mirrors to be at sub-zero temperatures while the other side is bombarded with heat from the Sun. It’s just another example of how the symbiotic relationship between technology and science allow us to do really cool and out-of-this-world things
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Great Post! Another interesting tid-bit about JWST is that it is planned to be the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope, looking at a similar part of the EM spectrum, however, because of its heliocentric orbit, it won’t be possible to visit the telescope if it needs repairs (at least not by humans).
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