"This is five times more than all the astronomers in the world discovered during the last 200 years since the discovery of the first asteroid," Željko Ivezić, Deputy Director of Rubin's Legacy Survey of Space and Time, said during the conference. "We can outdo two centuries of effort in just a couple of years."

With a spectacular array of galaxies and nebulas, the ambitious telescope begins its 10-year survey of the cosmos.