If there are secrets of astrophysics/reality lurking behind the previously impenetrable curtain which has separated us from the first 3-4 billion years of cosmic history, we are now going to be peering through (the fog of eons) to observe much of it.

Not to jump the gun - there are other critical hurdles (multiple sun shields, tension-cables, booms). Dozens of protocols and system start-ups to go green before the show starts. 

When there's a robot down a gravity well a million miles long chilled to the temperature of the coldest thing on Earth (in a laboratory), obviously every command to do something critically important (with hardware or software) is potentially catastrophic if it fails.

I mean, just imagine building the most optically-precise scope, and most-expensive robot in history, then dropping the whole combo down a well over 1 million miles long with an infinite ocean of liquid nitrogen at the bottom. 

That is essentially what's been done. 

 

So far nominal. Someone must have figured out a way to shield this project from the harmful radiation of government's direct control, otherwise it would never have been this successful.