Dozens of steps down to the millimeter, miles from Earth, without a plan B. Despite the cold sweats that NASA engineers may have had, the James Webb Telescope, Hubble’s successor, is fully deployed in the Space two weeks after its launch from Kourou, Guyana, announces the US space agency.
Two weeks after launch, @NASAWebb has hit its next biggest milestone: the mirrors have completed deployment and the next-generation telescope has taken its final form.
Next up for Webb? Five months of alignment and calibration before we start getting images: pic.twitter.com/BOj5O1HS37
– NASA (@NASA) January 8, 2022
It has successfully completed the last stage of its deployment, with that of its main mirror, and it is now in its final configuration to be able to begin, in a little over five months, its exploration of the cosmos.
The telescope’s iconic main mirror measures around 6.5 meters in diameter, and was therefore too large to fit into a rocket as it took off. Its two sides had thus been folded up. The first of these two wings was deployed on Friday, and the second opened on Saturday morning, as planned, NASA said. The space agency teams continued to lock it in place, however, in order to secure it permanently.