The James Webb Space Telescope, which was sent into space last Saturday, has ended its almost 22-year development process. As a result of the efforts of hundreds of scientists working for the project, the telescope, which was finally sent into space, is traveling to its current location. Breaths are already held for the critical phase that will begin while this journey continues.
James Webb Space Telescope mirror will begin to take shape
JWST’s highly sensitive mirror will begin to take shape for the first time in the next two weeks. This phase of the telescope, whose journey is calculated to take 29 days, was a phase expected long before launch. The gigantic telescope, which had extremely fine adjustments, had to be folded in real terms to be sent into space. Engineers worked for years to develop a mechanism so that the telescope could take shape on its own, so that it could go into space.
The mechanism established to take the shape of the telescope is one of the most important processes for it to start its task. There was a technical malfunction in the Hubble Space Telescope, which was sent into space in 1990, and the malfunction was fixed three years later as a result of the intervention of astronauts in the region. However, since James Webb was sent about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, it is not possible for astronauts to correct the error in the event of a malfunction.
James Webb, who has only been on the road for three days, will reach the mission area called L2 in 26 days. After that, the necessary fine-tuning phase for the telescope to work will begin. After the configuration phase, which NASA announced to take about 5 months, we can start getting the first images from James Webb.
Although the James Webb Space Telescope has completed its development process, the next days are also quite painful. Despite nearly 22 years of work, we still have to hope things work out. Although James Webb has an error correction mechanism, some factors in space can cause the telescope to become dysfunctional.
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