Washington, Jan. 9 (BUS): NASA has deployed its massive gold-coated mirror with the new James Webb Space Telescope.
The US space agency said the telescope has fully deployed its 6.4-meter primary mirror, to complete the final stage of all major spacecraft deployments to prepare for scientific operations, German news agency (dpa) reported.
NASA chief Bill Nelson called it a “milestone.”
The telescope, jointly built by space agencies in Europe, the United States and Canada, will explore the oldest galaxies in the universe.
NASA said the two wings of the telescope’s primary mirror were opened remotely over the course of several days and then finally fixed. There will now be a five-month phase of further alignment and calibration before the images are delivered.
Scientists hope that the images taken by the telescope will provide insights into the universe soon after the Big Bang, about 13.8 billion years ago, and that it will begin to transmit images and data to Earth in the summer.
The deployment of mirror systems came on the heels of the telescope’s sun shield that spanned a few days earlier. The sun’s shadow is the size of a tennis court.
The telescope was launched on December 25 aboard an Ariane rocket from the European Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. Webb’s team began deploying the sunblock remotely three days later. The telescope is expected to travel 1.5 million kilometers from Earth – far from the Moon – and take about four weeks to travel that distance.
The James Webb Telescope took about 30 years to develop and cost about $10 billion (€8.8 billion). It is the successor to the Hubble telescope, which is now in use for more than 30 years.
MI