The world’s largest and most powerful space telescope, James Webb, reached its destination 1.6 million kilometers from Earth on Monday, a month after taking off on a quest to study the origin of the universe.
James Webb fired up his rocket boosters for nearly five minutes to orbit the sun at the designated location, and NASA has confirmed that the operation went as planned.
The $10 billion observatory’s mirrors still need to be meticulously aligned and the infrared detectors sufficiently cooled before scientific observations can begin in June. But Baltimore flight controllers were euphoric after achieving another success.
“We are about to uncover the mysteries of the universe. And I can’t wait to see Webb’s first shots of the universe this summer! NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
The telescope will allow astronomers to travel further back in time than ever before, to the formation of the first stars and galaxies 13.7 billion years ago. It’s barely 100 million years after the Big Bang when the universe was created.
In addition to making stellar observations, Webb will scan the atmospheres of extraterrestrial worlds for possible signs of life.
A sunshade the size of a tennis court opened on the telescope in early January, a week and a half after the Christmas Day launch from French Guiana. The observatory’s golden mirror — which is 6.5 meters in diameter — unfolded a few days later.
Turning the engine on Monday placed Webb in orbit around the sun at the second Lagrange point, where the gravitational forces of the sun and Earth balance each other. The seven-tonne spacecraft always faces the night side of Earth to keep its infrared detectors as cool as possible.
At 1.6 million kilometers, Webb is four times farther than the Moon.
Considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits 530 kilometers away, Webb is too far away for emergency repairs. This makes the milestones of the past month – and those to come – all the more critical.
Spacewalk astronauts have worked five times on Hubble. The first repair, in 1993, corrected the blurry vision of the telescope, a flaw introduced during the construction of the mirror on earth.
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