The sun shield protecting the James Webb Space Telescope is four days old and should be fully deployed by the end of this week.
The telescope is the largest and most technically complex space science telescope NASA has ever built, the organization said in a previous statement. The project required collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. The telescope is supposed to observe deep space and the Sun.
The original deployment completion date was pushed back by a few days, but it should only take another couple of days. The sun shield will be needed to protect it from harmful rays and heat.
NASA said that the temperature is 600 degrees cooler on the cold shaded side of the observatory than it is on the hot sunlit side.
Each of the five layers is cooler than the last. Kapton is a lightweight material with special thermal properties.
The vacuum between the layers is very good and the heat is coming from between the layers.
The sun shield is currently on NASA's site, or fans can look forward to the next phase of the telescope's mission, which will shift to the primary and secondary mirrors by January 7.
It will be months after the sun shield and mirrors are put in before the telescope can begin observing the early universe and deep space. The $10 billion project is expected to begin regular science operations in late June or early July.
Researchers are hoping to capture an extreme supernova later this year, as well as confirm whether supermassive stars are the origins of supermassive black holes. It is possible that the telescope will detect evidence of alien life.
We hope the telescope lives up to NASA's wildest dreams, but it will be a while before there is any evidence of its success.
A telescope 100x stronger than Hubble will reveal parts of the universe that have never been seen before.
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