NASA is over the moon knowing its James Webb Space Telescope has finally reached its destination.
The telescope performed a slight course correction Monday to place Webb into its final orbital position, where the gravitational pull of the sun and Earth are in balance, called the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), NASA announced. Its new home is nearly a million miles away from Earth, and the orbit around L2 will allow the telescope to have “a wide view of the cosmos at any given moment.”
“Webb, welcome home!” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Congratulations to the team for all of their hard work ensuring Webb’s safe arrival at L2 today. We’re one step closer to uncovering the mysteries of the universe. And I can’t wait to see Webb’s first new views of the universe this summer!”
SPACE JAM: AS EARTH ORBIT BECOMES MORE CONGESTED AND CONTESTED, CRITICAL SATELLITES ARE AT RISK
? Home, home on Lagrange! We successfully completed our burn to start #NASAWebb on its orbit of the 2nd Lagrange point (L2), about a million miles (1.5 million km) from Earth. It will orbit the Sun, in line with Earth, as it orbits L2. https://t.co/bsIU3vccAj #UnfoldTheUniverse pic.twitter.com/WDhuANEP5h
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) January 24, 2022
NASA launched the telescope on Christmas Day in an Ariane 5 rocket and deployed its sun shield on Jan. 4. With the satellite now orbiting L2, NASA engineers will spend the next three months aligning the telescope’s optics “to nearly nanometer precision” before it begins taking photographs, NASA said.
“During the past month, JWST has achieved amazing success and is a tribute to all the folks who spent many years and even decades to ensure mission success,” said Bill Ochs, Webb project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “We are now on the verge of aligning the mirrors, instrument activation and commissioning, and the start of wondrous and astonishing discoveries.”
The Webb telescope has technology designed to detect the oldest light in the universe by capturing infrared wavelengths. It is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which launched in 1990.
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The project was a joint effort between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. Its construction took nearly 30 years and will cost the United States $9.7 billion.
