The telescope is slowly opening up from the compact shape that allowed it to fit inside the rocket's fairing on launch day.
The opening of the giant sun shield is the most challenging part of the early operations, as the team has already completed two successful burns and deployed its solar array and antenna.
It's not easy to deploy such a large piece of kit, and if it goes wrong, the $10 billion telescope could miss its chance to peer into deep space in the hope of uncovering some of the secrets of our universe.
The first two stages of the sun shield's deployment have been declared a success. The sun shield pallet that will hold the sun shield's five layers was unfolded on Tuesday.
The video below shows how the pallets were deployed.
NASA said that webb is starting to resemble the form it will take when it is fully deployed.
The agency, which collaborated with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency for the mission, said the team began working on the deployment of the forward pallet on Tuesday morning. The time is later. It oversaw the deployment of the pallet, which was done at 7:25 p.m. The time is later.
The lowering of the forward pallet from stowed to its deployed position took only 20 minutes, but the overall process took several hours for each because of the dozens of additional steps required.
The additional processes included monitoring structural temperatures, positioning the observatory in a way for the sun to provide optimal temperatures, setting off release mechanisms, configuring electronics and software, and finally,latching the pallets into position.
Sunday, January 2 is the target date for completing the process of full deployment of the sun shield.
NASA and its partners as well as those following the mission from around the world will have to go through another process after the telescope is deployed.
The most powerful space telescope ever built is currently heading toward its destination, a point known as L2 around a million miles from Earth. It is expected to arrive there at the end of January.
Fine-tuning the telescope's instruments will take around five months after that.
Once all of these processes are completed, the James Webb Space Telescope can begin its work that is expected to take human understanding of the universe to a whole new level.
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