Astronomers and space fans around the world can breathe a sigh of relief, as the James Webb Space Telescope is now fully deployed.
The second wing of the NASA observatory was opened today, bringing the structure up to its full size and marking the end of the mission's long, risky and ultra-complex deployment phase.
The final mirror segment folded in place. The controllers of the space telescope clapped and high-fived each other. It will take about two hours to put the mirror in place.
Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science, said from Switzerland that it was an amazing milestone. The beautiful pattern in the sky is almost complete. I'm amazed and in awe of this.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope mission is live.
The James Webb Space Telescope works in pictures.
Zurbuchen promised not to shave until its deployment was complete.
Zurbuchen said he would shave today.
The mission team piped music into their operations center in Baltimore, Maryland, to ease the tension of today's final deployment. "Ring My Bell" was one of their selections.
"I feel a glow in my chest right now, just seeing that mirror deployed all together, you know, I just feel this kind of glow, you know, I'm an astronomer, you know, I host the NASA live Webb mirror deployment webcast," said NASA astronomer and host of The size of the mirror will allow us to see the universe as it was only 100 million years after the start of the Big bang.
The engineering team for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope celebrates at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore as the starboard primary mirror wing successfully deployed. The image is from NASA/Bill Ingalls.
On Christmas Day, the telescope was launched on a mission to peer at the universe's first stars and galaxies, sniff the air of nearby alien planets for intriguing chemicals, and perform a wide variety of other high-profile tasks. Getting the observatory up to speed is a lot of work.
We feel heat when we look in theIR light. To pick up faint heat signatures, the telescope's instruments must be kept very cold, so they use a five-layer sun shield.
The sun shield is too large to fit in the protective payload fairing of a currently operational rocket, so it was launched in a compact configuration. The primary mirror, which is 21.3-foot-wide, consists of 18 gold-plated hexagonal segments arrayed across a central post and two side wings.
The deployment phase was involved.
NASA posted an explainer video called "29 days on the Edge" in which the agency said that the observatory has 50 major deployment and 178 release mechanisms.
Menzel said that every single one of them must work. "Unfolding Webb is hands-down the most complicated activity we have ever done."
Mission engineers could exhale a sigh of relief on Saturday.
"178 of 178" The last of the non-redundant release mechanism tasks was marked by the team after the mirror deployed.
The sun shield structure has 140 release mechanisms, 70 hinge assembly, 400 pulleys, 90 cables and eight deployment motors, according to mission team members. The sun shield extension took about a week, but all of them worked perfectly.
The mirror deployment was a multistep process. On Wednesday, the mission team locked into place the observatory's secondary mirror, the second surface that deep-space photos will hit on their way to the scientific instruments.
The left wing of the primary mirror was deployed on Friday. Today, the starboard wing followed suit.
The deployment of the starboard mirror wing of the James Webb Space Telescope is shown in this NASA animation. The image is from NASA.
All of these deployment steps have taken place while Webb cruises toward its final destination, a stable spot about 930,000 miles from our planet called the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2. The sun shield at L2 can block the light and heat coming off the Earth and moon.
On or around January 23, the day after the launch, the engine burn will put it into space. The telescope won't be ready to use until later.
The mission team will have to check out and calibrate the four scientific instruments and align the segments of the primary mirror so that it acts a single, nearly perfect light-collecting surface. The work is expected to take a long time.
If everything goes according to plan, the joint effort of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency will begin its science mission in late June or early July and keep observing the universe for at least five years.
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