NASA engineers have started a program in Christmas The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) focus was launched, after It has successfully opened the space telescope at its prime location. The space agency said it would take months to align the eighteen-segment powerful mirror elements into a large telescope.
As a first step, the engineers activated 126 micro-actuators (small actuators) with which they wanted to adjust the primary mirror, and then activated six more pieces of the secondary mirror. The latter will now be responsible for verifying the completion of the sequence of primary tasks and will subsequently collect the light reflected from the primary mirror, thus contributing to the planned operation of the observatory. In the process, members of the control team also checked actuators operating at minus 240°C to control the JWST guiding mirror, which will play a role in the image stabilization process at a later time.
NASA is waiting Goddard Turksponjapan There is ground control it will take ten days for the mirrors to flip from the starting direction. Currently, the eighteen hexagons that make up the mirror are still held in place at startup. They must be moved one centimeter forward before they meet in one unbroken surface to collect the light. the guardian Lee Feinberg, director of battery management at the JWST optical telescope, said it is expected to complete the mission “five thousandths of a human hair thick” in three months.
If all goes well, James Webb may take his first photos in May, which the general public will see in June.
The Webb Space Telescope is still on its way to the point L2 Lagrange, a million and a half million kilometers from Earth, which will be its parking lot and workplace. The next step will be on January 23, when the spacecraft’s engines are scheduled to begin arriving at L2. Once on the right track, point L2 will be circled in about a year and a half.
JWST mirror has a diameter of 6.5 meters and has brightness F/ 20.2 and the focal length is 131.4 metres. It detects the orange-red to mid-infrared range visible to the human eye, and collects photons in the 600-nm to 28.3-μm range. During the planned life of the observatory for ten years they expect, managed to revolutionize astronomy and astrophysics to the same level as the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s.
(source: guardianAnd NASAAnd VCSE)
(Cover image: James Webb Space Telescope illustration from the US Space Agency. Image: Adriana Manrique Gutierrez / NASA GSFC/CIL)
