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The James Webb Telescope approaches its final destination in orbit of the Sun

2022-01-24T14:57:20.219Z


The most complex space observatory ever invented will now need a few months to calibrate all its instruments and start operating next summer


NASA's James Webb Telescope, designed to give the world an unprecedented view of the early universe, approaches its final gravitational destination Monday in orbit around the Sun, 1.6 million kilometers from Earth.

At 2:00 p.m. on the east coast of the United States, and 8:00 p.m. in Madrid, the telescope will carry out a trajectory correction maneuver, so that it will position itself at the point known as Lagrange 2 or L2, in a stable orbit between the Earth and the sun.

Mission engineers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore will activate James Webb's built-in thrusters, and scientists will check when it successfully inserts into orbit, according to one of them, NASA's Eric Smith. From this location, the James Webb Telescope will follow a path in constant alignment with Earth, circling the Sun in tandem and allowing uninterrupted radio contact. Webb's predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, orbits Earth from 547 kilometers away, passing through Earth's shadow every 90 minutes. Now, Webb's L2 position will allow "a minimal amount of energy to stay in orbit," Smith added.

The operations center has also begun fine-tuning the telescope's main mirror, an 18-segment mesh of gold-coated beryllium metal that measures 6.5 meters in diameter, larger than Hubble's. Its size and design allow it to operate primarily in the infrared spectrum so Webb will be able to peer beyond clouds of gas and dust and observe objects at greater distances than ever before. The expectation is that the new telescope will revolutionize astronomy and provide a first look at galaxies born just 100 million years after the Big Bang, a theory that dates the beginning of the universe to 13.8 billion years ago. Webb's instruments also make it ideal for finding signs of life on newly discovered exoplanets, celestial bodies that orbit distant stars.and to observe worlds closer to Earth, such as Mars or Titan, the ice moon of Saturn.

There are still a few months to go in preparation for the Webb's astronomical debut. The 18 segments of its main mirror, which were folded together to fit inside the rocket that carried the telescope into space, were deployed along with their structural components over a two-week period after launch on December 25. These segments moved slowly until they became a single surface. Now all 18 segments need to align to get the right focus, a process that will take about three months. As this progresses, engineers will begin turning on the observatory's mid-infrared spectrograph, camera and other instruments. This will be followed by two months in which these instruments will be calibrated, Smith has detailed.

If all goes as planned, the James Webb telescope will be ready in the summer, when it will send back images to show that everything is working properly.

But Smith said Webb's most anticipated jobs will take longer.

The telescope is an international project led by NASA in collaboration with the European Space Agency and Canada.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-01-24

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