One year ago, Congress defunded public media. Now that we're 100% community funded, please become a sustaining member or increase your existing membership today.
NASA's James Webb Telescope Completes Its Final Unfolding In Space
Technicians lift the mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope using a crane at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in Apr. 2017.
(
Desiree Stover
/
NASA
)
The James Webb telescope completed its final major step of deployment on Saturday morning, when the last mirror wing of the telescope unfolded in space into its final configuration.
The telescope, which is part of an international partnership that includes the European and Canadian space agencies, launched on Dec. 25 and is considered to be the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. While there were no cameras to capture the unfolding, NASA provided a virtual simulation of the process through a livestream.
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.
— NASA (@NASA) January 8, 2022
Next up for Webb? Five months of alignment and calibration before we start getting images: pic.twitter.com/BOj5O1HS37
At around 10:28 a.m. ET, the telescope reached the "end of deployment," and those at the mission operations control started applauding.
"The events of the last two weeks have truly been amazing," Bill Ochs, the Webb project manager at NASA Goddard, said Saturday afternoon. "Today represents the beginning of a journey for this incredible machine, to its discoveries that we'll be making in the future."
The telescope has two mirrors and a sunshield that all had to be unfolded in space, which had never been done before. The mirrors are so large they were folded like origami into the telescope. One of the mirrors and the sunshield deployed successfully earlier this week.
The full deployment of the telescope has been a meticulous two-week process, but it's not done yet. After the wing unfolded, it goes through a latch-on process that takes several hours.
Sponsored message
"Just because we made it look easy doesn't mean it was easy," Ochs said, adding that team members were relieved after the deployment, cheering and doing the wave in the operations center.
NASA says the next step after that involves about five months of alignment and calibration before the telescope starts picking up images.
One year ago, Congress voted to defund public media, eliminating a critical $1.7 million from our budget every year going forward. But they couldn’t silence us, and we’re not going anywhere. LAist is now 100% community funded and that means we’re taking our future into our own hands and turning to you to keep local reporting strong.
You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
Senior Vice President News, Editor in Chief
