Foreign media such as Engadget reported on the 9th (local time) that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) succeeded in unfolding the 6.5m-diameter main reflection mirror, the last gateway to the installation of the James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA announced, “The Ground Control Center of the Space Telescope Research Center announced that the James Webb Space Telescope has completed the deployment of 18 main reflection mirrors at 1:17 pm (local time, 3:17 Korean time) on the 8th.” .
On the 25th of last month, NASA started deploying the sun shield three days following the telescope was launched, and on the 31st it began to open the screen and successfully unfolded the sun shield on the 4th. Lastly, the telescope successfully unfolded the auxiliary mirror and the main reflection mirror, and all major parts were successfully placed.
Foreign media said that there is work to be done in the future, which will require moving some of the telescope mirrors to align the optics, but this will be a work that will take several months. did.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s largest next-generation space telescope, succeeding the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and Canada invested regarding $10 billion (regarding 11.9 trillion won) in research and development over the past 25 years.
The James Webb Space Telescope, which succeeded in deploying the main reflection mirror, is moving to the ‘Lagrange point’, a space point 1.5 million km away from the Earth, the target point. In the future, the telescope has to travel regarding 360,000 km.
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NASA says James Webb is regarding 100 times more capable of observing than Hubble using gold-plated giant mirrors and infrared observation tools. James Webb has a special camera that incorporates a spectrometer, powerful enough to detect tiny lights on Jupiter’s moons. This is known for its ability to identify molecules of oxygen on planets up to 1,000 light-years away.
The James Webb Space Telescope’s main mission is to observe events that occurred early in the formation of the universe.
