The James Webb Space Telescope glides to its deep-room parking location right now!
Today’s the day: Nearly a month following start, the James Webb House Telescope will get there at its deep-room celestial vacation spot on Monday (Jan. 24).
Webb will be orbiting Earth-sunlight Lagrange Stage 2 (L2), which is about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from our planet. Below, the spacecraft can use a bare minimum of gasoline to orbit many thanks to its alignment with the sunshine and Earth.
NASA will not be broadcasting from mission control all through the melt away, as the agency did for some prior crucial milestones. Nevertheless, NASA ideas to carry quite a few adhere to-up occasions are living these days soon after executing the critical burn up at about 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT).
Live updates: NASA’s James Webb Area Telescope mission
An artist’s depiction of the absolutely deployed James Webb Room Telescope completing its ultimate burn up to achieve orbit around L2. (Graphic credit score: NASA)
First the company will host a broadcast at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) live on the NASA Science Dwell website, as very well as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, that includes scientists and engineers working on Webb.
Viewers can submit thoughts on social media utilizing he hashtag #UnfoldtheUniverse or by leaving a comment on the Facebook or YouTube stream. Two reps will remedy concerns: Amber Straughn, deputy challenge scientist for Webb communications at NASA’s Goddard Room Flight Center in Maryland, and Scarlin Hernandez, flight programs engineer, Area Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
Adhering to the public livestream will be a media teleconference at 4 p.m. EST (2100 GMT) that will also be broadcast live on the agency’s web site. Here’s who will be on the contact:
Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope aspect manager, Goddard
Keith Parrish, Webb observatory commissioning supervisor, Goddard
Jane Rigby, Webb operations venture scientist, Goddard
Webb has an formidable mission to much better realize the early days of our universe, to peer at distant exoplanets and their environment, and to respond to significant-scale thoughts these kinds of as how swiftly the universe is growing.
The $10 billion telescope released Dec. 25 following decades of developmental delays, but since launch has executed its milestones on time and with very little problems to date. The complex deployment of its primary mirror, for illustration, concluded with only minor hitches before this thirty day period.
