The James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ) will be a large ( 6 m ) cold ( 50 K ) telescope launched to the second Earth - Sun Lagrange point . It is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope , and is a partnership of NASA , ESA and CSA . It 's science goals are to detect and identify the first galaxies to form in the universe , to trace their assembly into the Hubble Sequence , and to study stellar and planetary system formation . JWST will have three instruments : The Near InfiaRed Camera ( NIRCam ) and the Near InfraRed multiobject Spectrometer ( NIRSpec ) will cover the wavelength range 0.6 to 5 microns , and the Mid InfraRed Instrument ( MIRI ) will do both imaging and spectroscopy from 5 to 28 microns .