The James Webb Space Telescope arrives at its final orbit

The first pictures are months away.

J. fingas

NASA.

The telescope is moving to its new home. After one last course correction burn, the remote observatory entered its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth lagrange point. The telescope's primary mirror segments and secondary mirror have already been deployed, but you'll have to wait until the summer for the first imagery. The next several months will be spent by NASA preparing the JWST for service.

The telescope's mission depends on the L2 position. It provides a largely unobstructed view of space while giving the spacecraft a cold, interference-free position that helps its instruments live up to their full potential. The early Universe is expected to be studied using the JWST, which is expected to provide data that wouldn't be available from an Earth-based telescope.

The arrival is good news for NASA. The project's $10 billion price tag was high, but it also proved that the space agency could successfully launch and deploy an observatory far from Earth. With the older telescope clearly in rough shape, expectations are high for the new machine, which is widely considered the spiritual successor to Hubble.

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