The James Webb Space Telescope, which made a lot of noise even before its full launch, has finally reached its “new home”. That is, the space agency NASA officially confirmed the fact that the remote observatory was able to successfully enter its last orbit around the second Lagrange point between the Sun and the Earth, also known as L2, after the last course correction at the moment.
It should be noted that the segments of the primary mirror of the telescope, just like the secondary mirror, are already deployed. But despite this, you and I will still have to wait until the summer in order to get the first images from it. That is why NASA will spend the next few months precisely preparing the James Webb Space Telescope for operation, including a three-month process of aligning the optics.
🏠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
Also, one should not ignore the fact that the L2 orbit is indeed crucial for the mission of the telescope. It provides a virtually unobstructed view of space, while at the same time providing the spacecraft with a cool, unobstructed position, which in turn helps its instruments reach their full potential. The James Webb Space Telescope is expected to study the early universe using infrared light, providing data that would not previously have been available from an orbiting telescope on Earth such as Hubble.
And by the way, arriving in your orbit is also a relief for NASA in another way. The fact is that the stakes, of course, were quite high from the very beginning, especially considering the cost of the project, which is an impressive 10 billion dollars. But at the same time, it also proves that a space agency can successfully launch and deploy a sophisticated observatory far from Earth. And while they are indeed different devices at their core, the James Webb Space Telescope is widely considered to be the spiritual successor to the Hubble Telescope, as the old telescope is clearly in its so-called “gross form”. That is why the expectations and hopes placed on the new project are especially high.
