NASA\u2019s revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope has reached the final orbit in space on Tuesday, after a month of space travel.
A joint effort with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency, the Webb mission was launched on December 25.
At 2 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Webb fired its onboard thrusters for nearly five minutes (297 seconds) to complete the final post launch course correction to its trajectory, the space agency said.
This mid-course correction burn inserted Webb toward its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, nearly 1 million miles away from the Earth.
The final mid-course burn added only about 3.6 miles per hour (1.6 metres per second) – a mere walking pace – to Webb\u2019s speed, which was all that was needed to send it to its preferred \u201chalo\u201d orbit around the L2 point.
\u201cWebb, welcome home!\u201d said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, in a statement.
\u201cCongratulations to the team for all of their hard work ensuring Webb\u2019s safe arrival at L2 today. We\u2019re one step closer to uncovering the mysteries of the universe. And I can\u2019t wait to see Webb\u2019s first new views of the universe this summer!\u201d he added.
Webb\u2019s orbit will allow it a wide view of the cosmos at any given moment, as well as the opportunity for its telescope optics and scientific instruments to get cold enough to function and perform optimal science.
\u201cDuring 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,\u201d said Bill Ochs, Webb project manager at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center.
\u201cWe are now on the verge of aligning the mirrors, instrument activation and commissioning, and the start of wondrous and astonishing discoveries.\u201d
As of now, Webb\u2019s primary mirror segments and secondary mirror have been deployed from their launch positions, now engineers will begin the sophisticated three-month process of aligning the telescope\u2019s optics to nearly nanometer precision, NASA said.
The team aims to start regular science operations six months after launch, by June.
The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope will explore every phase of cosmic history — from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA\u2019s revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope has reached the final orbit in space on Tuesday, after a month of space travel.A joint effort with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency, the Webb mission was launched on December 25.At 2 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Webb fired its onboard thrusters for nearly five minutes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":247149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}