蜜芽传媒

How about this for a Christmas present to the world? Tomorrow - on Christmas day - NASA will launch the world's most powerful and most expensive telescope, to replace the Hubble telescope. The James Webb observatory telescope, which took over a decade to develop, will allow us to look deeper into how the universe is shaped.

Major General Charles Bolden was the pilot on the Discovery shuttle that launched the Hubble telescope 30 years ago.

He's also a former astronaut who's flown on four Space Shuttle missions - and has himself been involved with the James Webb telescope.

He spoke to Newsday about his excitement at the launch - and told us how he hopes the discovery of extraterrestrial life could make humanity better.

"It's going to allow us see in the dark. It's going to allow us see inside planets that visual telescopes like Hubble never allowed us to see... We'll be looking at images inside the atmospheres of some of the distant planets around very distant stars in other galaxies - exoplanets - that are close enough to earth that we think could possibly sustain some form of life."

(Photo: Charles Bolden in front of the James Webb Space Telescope during the development phase. Credit: Getty Images)

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