James Webb telescope successfully reaches its final destination
Now for six months of calibrations before active research
The James Webb telescope has reached its final destination.
Around 3 pm EST, the telescope sauntered into the second Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system, where it will stay for at least the next two decades.
Between the launch on Christmas day and today, a thousand different things could have gone wrong.
The Ariane 5 rocket could have failed, the initial deployment could have been wrong, the sun shields may have not unfolded correctly or torn apart, the secondary mirrors may have not unfolded, one of the screws could have gotten stuck — etc, etc.
But nothing went wrong.
10 Billion dollars and twenty years of hard work finally paid off — and the next generation space telescope glided smoothly into its highest perch.
From here, it will view the Universe in infrared, and capture the first lights of baby galaxies and still evolving gas clouds.
The Lagrange Points are places where the gravitational attraction of the Sun, Earth, and the centripetal force of the satellite exactly balance each other so that the telescope will stay in this exact place without a lot of fuel.
The second Lagrange point is on the shadow side of the earth and therefore will be very very cold.
This is vitally important for the high-sensitivity infrared sensor on the telescope.
There will now be six months of calibrations to make sure that the lens focus is perfect and everything works well because the scientific experiments begin.
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