Woohoo!!! 🎉 The James Webb Space Telescope has safely reached its home in space! 👏 🥂 😄 We can't wait to see its new view of the Universe!! 📷 NASA
At around 2:00 pm Eastern Time , the observatory fired its thrusters for 5 minutes in order to reach the so-called second Lagrange point, or L2, where it will have access to nearly half the sky at any given moment."We're one step closer to uncovering the mysteries of the Universe.
For the giant parasol to offer effective protection, it needs the Sun, Earth, and Moon to all be in the same direction, with the cold side operating at - 370 degrees Fahrenheit ., was the third such maneuver since Webb was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket on December 25. The plan was intentional, because if Webb had gotten too much thrust from the rocket, it wouldn't be able to turn around to fly back to Earth, as that would expose its optics to the Sun, overheating and destroying them.It was therefore decided to slightly underburn the rocket firing and use the telescope's own thrusters to make up the difference.
Webb, which is expected to cost NASA nearly US$10 billion, is one of the most expensive scientific platforms ever built, comparable to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and its predecessor telescope, Hubble.
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James Webb Space Telescope arrives at new home in spaceChelsea “Foxanne” Gohd joined Space.com in 2018 and is now a Senior Writer, writing about everything from climate change to planetary science and human spaceflight in both articles and on-camera in videos. With a degree in Public Health and biological sciences, Chelsea has written and worked for institutions including the American Museum of Natural History, Scientific American, Discover Magazine Blog, Astronomy Magazine and Live Science. When not writing, editing or filming something space-y, Chelsea 'Foxanne' Gohd is writing music and performing as Foxanne, even launching a song to space in 2021 with Inspiration4. You can follow her on Twitter chelsea_gohd and foxannemusic.
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