James Webb Telescope Exceeded Moon’s Orbit

Location tracking data shown James Webb Telescope .’s alienNASA agency It crossed the Moon’s orbit after the second of three required course corrections, and was at a distance of more than 471,000 km from Earth – the average distance from Earth to the Moon is about 384,000 km.

Overall, the James Webb Telescope will over a period of one month perform three course corrections, the first of which began 12.5 hours after launch as its engines lasted 65 minutes; The second, 60 hours after takeoff, ran his engines for a much shorter duration, took 9 minutes and 27 seconds, and is now complete.

James Webb will perform a third and final course correction about 29 days after launch, in order to enter (halo orbit) around Langrange Point 2, a location about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth on the opposite side of the Sun.

The remote location will help the James Webb Telescope to accurately detect infrared light with minimal interference from the Sun.

Currently all eyes are on the telescope’s solar shield, which the telescope must begin to open and separate its five ultra-thin layers. This solar shield is integral to the mission objective of observing infrared light.

Deployment of the solar shield is expected to begin, three days after launch, although each phase of deployment is controlled by the control center on Earth.

First, James Webb must deploy the pallet and tower of the sun shield, then release the cover and covers of the sun shield, and this sequence of events is estimated to take about two days. After that, the arms of the sunshield will be deployed and by eight days after launch, the mission team hopes to have the sunshield fully deployed.