The agency also released a "selfie" image using a lens tailored to photograph the primary mirror to assist engineers during alignment. "Today we can say that design is going to deliver." The James Webb Space Telescope hitched a ride on the Ariane-5 rocket out of French Guiana and the Earths orbit. "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," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in the statement. That process isn't yet complete, NASA emphasized, but the hardest, most anxiety-inducing steps are now behind the team. But a mirror of that size can't be launched as-is, so the observatory's designers split the golden surface into 18 individually adjustable hexagonal segments.įor weeks, engineers on the mission have been fine-tuning the alignment of those segments to bring the universe into focus for the massive observatory. NASAs James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch in 2014, is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and the key to almost. JWST's observing power comes in part from the telescope's massive mirror, which stretches 21 feet across (6.5 meters). It has to work for astronomers, there is no plan B. That represents a new target for the observatory: Previous steps of the commissioning process centered on HD 84406, a star in the constellation Ursa Major that is located about 241 light-years from Earth.Īlso visible in the background are other stars and galaxies that the agency did not identify. The new image centers on a star called 2MASS J17554042+6551277, according to the statement. One reason that the James Webb Space Telescope is able to provide images of objects that the Hubble Telescope cannot is that it has better light-gathering power.
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