Behind the scenes at the James Webb Space Telescope

The successor to Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is a $8.5bn (£5.5bn) collaboration between Nasa, the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency.

The large mirror on the JWST will allow it to have a far greater sensitivity than Hubble and will enable scientists to see back in time to 200-300 million years after the Big Bang, as JWST project scientist Mark Clampin explains.

Construction began more than a decade ago and is due for completion in 2018.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit on 24 April 1990 and produced images that have changed the way scientists think about cosmology, astrophysics and planetary science.

For BBC Click, science correspondent Rebecca Morelle gets rare access to the heart of the project at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre near Baltimore to find out more.

More at BBC.com/Click and @BBCClick.