After tracking the status and updates regarding one of humanity’s most remarkable feats of engineering, the now-deployed James Webb Space Telescope—now revolving around Lagrange point L2 some 1.5 million km (932,000 mi)—has finally aligned its optics, enabling the large telescope to view the universe with clarity for the first time.
NASA announced the milestone for the space telescope last March 16, with NASA Science Mission Directorate associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen spearheading the agency’s announcement, much to the delight of astronomers and space enthusiasts worldwide.
“More than 20 years ago, the Webb team set out to build the most powerful telescope that anyone has ever put in space and came up with an audacious optical design to meet demanding science goals,” said Zurbuchen. “Today we can say that design is going to deliver.”
Now, the concept of using mirror “pieces” to assemble a segmented primary mirror isn’t anything new—ground-based telescopes like the Keck Telescopes atop the Mauna Kea Observatories also use the same type of technology, among others—Webb is the first space telescope of its kind to also make use of the technology.
What makes the task of aligning these telescopes all the more challenging is the fact that the telescope is 1.5 million km (932,000 mi) away, making the telescope nearly four times further away than the furthest humans have ever gone from our planet’s surface. (For the record, that’s about 400,000 km [248,000 mi], when astronauts aboard the Apollo 13 mission swung from the far side of the Moon).
“In addition to enabling the incredible science that Webb will achieve, the teams that designed, built, tested, launched, and now operate this observatory have pioneered a new way to build space telescopes,” said Lee Feinberg, manager of the James Webb Space Telescope’s optical telescope element.
“We have fully aligned and focused the telescope on a star and the performance is beating specifications,” said Webb’s deputy optical telescope element manager Ritva Keski-Kuha who was referring to the star 2MASS J17554042+6551277. “We are excited about what this means for science. […] We now know we have built the right telescope.”
Within the next several weeks, the rest of Webb’s data-gathering equipment will align itself with the telescope. NASA will use algorithms designed to evaluate the performance of each instrument, then apply corrections to align the telescope across all its instruments. From there, the final alignments will commence before declaring the telescope ready for full-scale research.
The alignment of Webb’s Optical Telescope Alignment is expected to end by May, with the rest of the telescope’s science instrument preparations expected to commence in the next two months after that. The space telescope’s first full-resolution images alongside science data are expected to be produced by the end of summer.
References
- Bartels, M. (2022, March 16). New James Webb Space Telescope photo showcases single star in key mission milestone. Space.Com. https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-alignment-photo
- Nanayakkara, T. (2022, March 17). The James Webb Space Telescope has taken its first aligned image of a star. Here’s how it was done. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/the-james-webb-space-telescope-has-taken-its-first-aligned-image-of-a-star-heres-how-it-was-done-178315
- Potter, S. (2022, March 16). Nasa’s webb reaches alignment milestone, optics working successfully [Text]. NASA. http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-webb-reaches-alignment-milestone-optics-working-successfully
- Wall, M. (2019, April 23). The most extreme human spaceflight records. Space.Com. https://www.space.com/11337-human-spaceflight-records-50th-anniversary.html
