NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope this week performed its final post-launch course correction maneuver, landing it on the path to final orbit—nearly 1 million miles from Earth.
The mid-course burn, according to NASA, lasted nearly five minutes (297 seconds) and added just enough speed—about 3.6 mph, or the average human walking pace—for the telescope to reach its preferred “halo” orbit.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson celebrated the milestone by welcoming the optical instrument “home” and congratulating his team “for all their hard work ensuring Webb’s safe arrival.”
The telescope’s orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2) allows for a wide view of the cosmos, not to mention the opportunity for its built-in instruments to reach the frigid temperatures required to perform optimally.
The world’s largest and most complex space science observatory—named after former NASA Administrator James E. Webb—finally took off the morning of Dec. 25 last year, embarking on a month-long journey to its intended orbit. Webb reached its first major milestone early this month, when the team remotely deployed a 70-foot sunshield to protect the telescope from the heat and light of the Sun, Earth, and Moon.
“During 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,” according to Bill Ochs, Webb project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We are now on the verge of aligning the mirrors, instrument activation and commissioning, and the start of wondrous and astonishing discoveries.”
Webb still has five months of setup—including deployment of the primary and secondary mirror wings, telescope optics alignment, and science instrument calibration. “We’re one step closer to uncovering the mysteries of the universe,” Nelson said in a statement. “And I can’t wait to see Webb’s first new views of the universe this summer,” when the first images are expected on Earth.
