NASA telescope arrives at its final destination a million miles away

The James Webb Space Telescope arrived at its orbital observation point 1 million miles away from Earth on Monday, where it will begin preparations to begin its observation mission this summer.  

In a blog post, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said the $10 billion, truck-sized telescope had corrected course to its final destination by firing its rocket thrusters for about five minutes.

“This mid-course correction burn inserted Webb toward its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, nearly 1 million miles away from the Earth,” reads the blog post.

“Webb, welcome home!” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Congratulations to the team for all of their hard work ensuring Webb’s safe arrival at L2 today. 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 said the orbit will allow it a wide view of the cosmos at any given moment.

The post noted Webb has used as little propellant as possible for the maneuver to preserve as much as possible to manage the telescope’s future operations, like small adjustments to keep Webb in its desired position. It is expected to operate for well over a decade.

Webb was launched Christmas Day 2021 and is 100 times as power as the aging Hubble Space Telescope it is intended to succeed. Its 6.5-meter (21 foot) primary mirror, which consists of 18 hexagonal mirror segments made of gold-plated beryllium, successfully unfolded last week.

Engineers will now begin a sophisticated, three-months process of aligning the telescope’s parts to a precision level approaching one nanometer, or one billionth of a meter.