After the James Webb Space Telescope successfully deployed its massive sunscreen earlier this month, followed shortly afterwards with its gold primary mirror, the most advanced space telescope ever was quietly zipping through space toward an orbit nearly a million miles from Earth.
After its launch on December 25, the James Webb Space Telescope was 865,000 miles from Earth and currently only 32,000 miles in orbit around its destination around the second Lagrange point between the Sun and Earth, known as L2.
Webb is preparing for his next crucial step: a decisive burn to bring it into L2 orbit, currently scheduled for Monday, January 24, Digitartlends reports.
“Our orbital burn is targeted on Monday afternoon to give our team several hours of required preparation,” the team involved in the insertion exercise said in a tweet.
Since the successful deployment of the primary mirror two weeks ago, the space telescope and its instruments have gradually begun to cool, an operation with the help of a tennis court-sized sun visor.
Before Webb begins his work in space exploration, the team will have to work on aligning the telescope’s optics and calibrating the scientific instruments, a process that is expected to take about five months.
That means Webb will start looking into deep space around June, observing the first galaxies in the universe, revealing the birth of stars and planets, and searching for exoplanets with the potential to sustain life.
The James Webb Space Telescope follows in the footsteps of the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been exploring deep space for more than 30 years. But because Webb is much more powerful than Hubble, scientists hope to make important discoveries during the mission that go beyond Hubble’s.
The $10 billion mission – a partnership between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency – was launched on December 25 and will run for at least five years and likely longer.