The James Webb telescope has finally deployed its main mirror and it's in position
Good news from space. The James Webb Space Telescope successfully deployed the main mirror and recorded the position of its segments.
Thus, the phase of the deployment of the observatory in space is fully completed.
The final operation of the JSWT deployment was the layout of its main mirror. On January 5, 2022, a secondary mirror was deployed.
On January 7, the observatory deployed and fixed the position of the left side section of the main mirror, which contains 3 segments, and on January 8, the right side section.
Thus, the observatory has completed all the main stages of deployment: the support tower, heat shield, solar battery, radiators and optical system.
When the main mirror has cooled down, the engineers will begin to fine-tune the position of all 18 segments.
At the end of its 29-day flight to the second Lagrange point (L2) in the Sun-Earth system, the observatory will make the final activation of the engines to enter the halo orbit around L2.
Source:
- NASA's Twitter: https://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1479880178021060609