Santa Cruz Sentinel

New space telescope reaches final stop million miles out

- By Marcia Dunn

The world’s biggest, most powerful space telescope arrived at its observatio­n post 1 million miles from Earth on Monday, a month after it lifted off on a quest to behold the dawn of the universe.

On command, the James Webb Space Telescope fired its rocket thrusters for nearly five minutes to go into orbit around the sun at its designated location, and NASA confirmed the operation went as planned.

The mirrors on the $10 billion observator­y still must be meticulous­ly aligned, the infrared detectors sufficient­ly chilled and the scientific instrument­s calibrated before observatio­ns can begin in June.

But flight controller­s in Baltimore were euphoric after chalking up another success.

“We’re one step closer to uncovering the mysteries of the universe. And I can’t wait to see Webb’s first new views of the universe this summer!” NASA Administra­tor Bill Nelson said in a statement.

The telescope will enable astronomer­s to peer back further in time than ever before, all the way back to when the first stars and galaxies were forming 13.7 billion years ago. That’s a mere 100 million years from the Big Bang, when the universe was created.

Besides making stellar observatio­ns, Webb will scan the atmosphere­s of alien worlds for possible signs of life.

“Webb is officially on station,” said Keith Parrish, a manager on the project. “This is just capping off just a remarkable 30 days.”

The telescope was launched from French Guiana on Christmas. A week and a half later, a sunshield as big as a tennis court stretched open on the telescope. The instrument’s gold-coated primary mirror — 21 feet (6.5 meters) across — unfolded a few days later.

The primary mirror has 18 hexagonal segments, each the size of a coffee table, that will have to be painstakin­gly aligned so that they see as one — a task that will take three months.

“We’re a month in and the baby hasn’t even opened its eyes yet,” Jane Rigby, the operations project scientist, said of the telescope’s infrared instrument­s. “But that’s the science that we’re looking forward to.”

Monday’s thruster firing put the telescope in orbit around the sun at the so-called second Lagrange point, where the gravitatio­nal forces of the sun and Earth balance each other.

The 7-ton spacecraft will loop-de-loop around that point while also circling the sun. It will always face Earth’s night side to keep its infrared detectors as frigid as possible.

At 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away, Webb is more than four times as distant as the moon.

The Webb is expected to operate for well over a decade, maybe two.

Considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits 330 miles (530 kilometers) up, Webb is too far away for emergency repairs. That makes the milestones over the past month — and the ones ahead — all the more critical.

Spacewalki­ng astronauts performed surgery five times on Hubble. The first operation, in 1993, corrected the telescope’s blurry vision, a flaw introduced during the mirror’s constructi­on on the ground.

Whether chasing optical and ultralight light like Hubble or infrared light like Webb, telescopes can see farther and more clearly when operating above Earth’s distorting atmosphere. That’s why NASA teamed up with the European and Canadian space agencies to get Webb and its mirror — the largest ever launched — into the cosmos.

 ?? NORTHROP GRUMMAN — NASA ?? Artistic rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope. On Monday the world’s biggest and most powerful space telescope reached its final destinatio­n 1million miles away, one month after launching on a quest to behold the dawn of the universe.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN — NASA Artistic rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope. On Monday the world’s biggest and most powerful space telescope reached its final destinatio­n 1million miles away, one month after launching on a quest to behold the dawn of the universe.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States