This final phase of commissioning was reached this Saturday. James Webb’s main mirror, about 6.5 meters in diameter, is now in place. with the telescope in its final configuration to begin space exploration in just over five months. “I’m thrilled,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA, the US space agency’s science mission chief, said live. “What an unusual move.”
The dimensions of the main mirror of the telescope did not allow transporting it in rockets and forced two sections to be folded. The first of these wings was installed on Friday and the second opened on Saturday morning.
NASA teams are still tightening the screws to keep them in place permanently and securely.
Each hexagonal segment that makes up the huge main mirror, plated with gold for better light reflection, will need to be carefully adjusted. Scientific instruments, in turn, will have to continue to cool and be accurately calibrated.
There has never been an attempt to place a telescope like James Webb in space before, and any problems with both the mirrors phase and the heat shield last Monday could ruin everything.
The astronomers community around the world breathed a sigh of relief this Saturday, and the mission is now close to success.
Mission within five months
Before you become fully functional However, James Webb must enter his final orbit at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.… This Saturday he was more than a million kilometers from our planet.Hubble’s successor, James Webb, is valued at approximately US $ 10 billion and is operated from a NASA base on the US east coast in Baltimore.
The entire operation to install the last mirror was broadcast live from the control room, and the announcement of the success of the operations drew a storm of applause.
As the most powerful telescope ever conceived and realized, James Webb should allow us to observe the first galaxies, formed just 200 million years after the Big Bang.
You should also allow great progress in the search for exoplanetsexploring their atmospheres in search of conditions conducive to the formation of life. Other observations are planned in the solar system itself, from Mars or from Jupiter’s moon Europa.
The great main mirror, the largest ever sent into orbit, should still be able to detect extremely faint light emanating from the far reaches of the universe. A much smaller secondary mirror placed at the end of a tripod, successfully implemented on Wednesday, will be used to focus the light from the primary before directing it to a third mirror and four analysis tools.
