It is happening. After years of delays, reschedulings, budget shortfalls, and even more delays, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched on December 25th and is now successfully on its way to the second point, about 1.5 million km from Earth.
The launch feels like a Christmas miracle if you celebrate Christmas.
The footage of the separation from the Ariane 5 rocket is absolutely stunning.
The next generation space observatory is a joint effort between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. If the plethora goes off without a hitch, it will allow us to see the light from the first galaxies in the early universe, peer at the atmospheres of exoplanets, and look at objects in our own solar system.
All is going well so far. The deployment of the solar array took place 3 minutes ahead of the published timelines, with the deploy still in view of the rocket stage camera. NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen said on his account that most commands from ground are given when certain conditions are reached. The deployment of the solar array was much quicker because the tip-off byariane5 was almost perfect.
The Ariane 5 rocket will be used to launch the James Webb Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope is a large telescope with a primary mirror. The observatory will look at every phase of the universe from the beginning to the end. The photo was taken by NASA/Bill Ingalls.
There are more launch and pre-launch images at NASA.
At about 12.5 hours into the flight, a course correction burn was performed to put the craft on a good trajectory to its destination in space. The burn took 65 minutes. According to mission experts, the burn could have lasted as long as 3 hours. The shorter burn is good news for the observatory.
Why is L2 so far away?
The second Lagrange Point is a wonderful accident of gravity and orbital mechanics, and the perfect place to park the telescope in space, wrote astronomer Michelle Thaller in a NASA post. The Lagrange Points are areas where gravity from the sun and Earth balance the motion of a satellite. The point at which a spacecraft can stay in a fixed position relative to the Earth and sun is at any of these points.
The diagram below shows the Lagrangian points for the Sun-Earth system. An object placed at one of the points will stay in place relative to the other two. Credit: NASA.
It will be a nail-biting time as it goes through all the major deployment over the next month. It will take six months for the first images to be delivered.
The observatory has four state-of-the-art science instruments with highly sensitive IR detectors. The light from the stars is much clearer than before. The mission is built to complement and further the scientific discoveries of Hubble and other missions.
More news to come.
You can learn more about the JWST at either the NASA website or the STScI website. NASA has adashboard where you can see where the observatory is and what is happening.
