No, we won’t be getting mind-blowing images of the universe anytime soon, with final setup still going to take months. However, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has reached its final orbit, the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), where it will make its important measurements of our galaxy and way, way beyond.
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The telescope’s primary mirror segments and secondary mirror have already been deployed, and now NASA will spend several months readying the JWST for service, including a three-month optics alignment process.
The second Lagrange point is an extremely important location for our observations to take place, but it does mean that if anything goes wrong with the JWST there is nothing we can do to fix it. We were able to send astronauts up to the Hubble Space Telescope to fix it, as it is situated in low-Earth orbit. However, L2 is about four times further from Earth than the moon and we wouldn’t be able to send humans out there to fix anything.
However, L2 will allow the JWST to make its intended observations due to its location. 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. JWST will study distant planets in the solar system, but its main focus will be to study the early Universe using infrared light, providing data that wouldn’t be available from an Earth orbit telescope like Hubble.
🏠 Home, home on Lagrange! We successfully completed our burn to start #NASAWebb on its orbit of the 2nd Lagrange point (L2), about a million miles (1.5 million km) from Earth. It will orbit the Sun, in line with Earth, as it orbits L2. https://t.co/bsIU3vccAj #UnfoldTheUniverse pic.twitter.com/WDhuANEP5h
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) January 24, 2022
The project has tallied up costs of about $10 billion, which is why the weeks since launch on Christmas Day, 2021 has been nerve-wracking for the scientists in charge of the project. From the unfolding of the solar shield, to the setup of the massive mirror, every step has been vital to the success of the mission. Setting up in L2 orbit is the final step, and after alignment the JWST is ready to change our understanding of the universe.
