All of the images in this gallery were released this week upon the groundbreaking of the Giant Magellan Telescope in the Chilean Andes. (GMT Organization)

Scientists and supporters gathered Wednesday morning in Chile's Atacama Desert to celebrate the beginning of an important project in space exploration.

The event marked the groundbreaking on the Giant Magellan Telescope, which will be located at the Las Campanas Obervatoryon a remote mountaintop in the Chilean Andes, according to a press release. When early operations begin in 2021, the telescope will deliver images 10 times clearer than the Hubble Space Telescope can produce, and the desert's clear skies will allow astronomers to peer deeper into space than ever before.

“We are thrilled to be breaking ground on the Giant Magellan Telescope site at such an exciting time for astronomy,” saidDr. Taft Armandroff, Board Chair and Director of the McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas at Austin, in the press release. “With its unprecedented size and resolving power, the Giant Magellan Telescope will allow current and future generations of astronomers to continue the journey of cosmic discovery.”

(PHOTOS: )

Scientists are hopeful that the new telescope will give them a better view of planets orbiting faraway stars, as well as an ability to watch the early formation of galaxies and stars, the release added. They'd also like to study dark matter and dark energy using the GMT.

Earlier in the year, the Atacama Desert that brought years' worth of rain to one of the driest places on Earth, but that did not slow plans to get construction underway.

"We are on high ground here, so neither rain nor floods will slow us down," Dr. Patrick McCarthy, interim president of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization, said in an email to weather.com.