After leaving Earth on Christmas Day, the James Webb Space Telescope has completed the final stage of its deployment: its main mirror.
The James Webb Space Telescope successfully completed the final phase of its deployment on Saturday, with its main mirror. It is now in its final form to be able to begin, in just over five months, on its exploration of the universe.
The telescope’s iconic main mirror was about 6.5 meters in diameter, and thus was too large to fit a rocket as it took off. Thus the sides were folded.
Publish in two steps
NASA said the first of those wings were deployed on Friday, and the second opened on Saturday morning, as planned. Space Agency teams kept locking it in place, in order to secure it permanently.
The telescope was launched from Baltimore on the east coast of the United States. NASA broadcast live footage from the control room Saturday morning, as dozens of engineers clapped with glee to announce the full deployment.
“What an extraordinary move.”
“I am touched,” Thomas Zurbuchen, who is in charge of science missions at NASA, announced via video. “What an extraordinary move.”
Deploying such a telescope into space, not only from its mirrors but also from its heat shield earlier this week, was a risky measure that had not been undertaken in the past.
Astronomers around the world can breathe a sigh of relief today, as the mission now appears to be very successful.
Watch the first galaxies
Before the telescope can start operating, it still has to reach its final orbit 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, and scientific instruments will have to keep cooling before it can be calibrated so precisely.
The most powerful space observatory ever built, James Webb should make it possible to observe the first galaxies, which formed only about 200 million years after the Big Bang.
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