NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which was launched from Earth last Christmas, has reached its target orbit after a month of travel, Cnet and other foreign media reported on the 24th (local time).
NASA announced that the James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at its final destination, Lagrange L2, at 2 pm EST on the 24th.
“Web, welcome home,” said NASA Director Bill Nelson in a statement. We are one step closer to unraveling the mysteries of the universe. And we look forward to seeing the first space photos taken by the web this summer.”
The James Webb Space Telescope arrived at the Lagrange L2 point 1.5 million km from Earth, traveling for a month after launch. This distance is about four times greater than the distance between the Earth and the moon (384,000 km).
Lagrange L2 point is an area where there is little influence of gravity, there is no distortion of light, and the sun is hidden behind the earth, so it is not disturbed by sunlight. Here, James Webb will be able to take stunning space pictures while using minimal fuel and maintaining the low temperatures essential for infrared telescopes.
James Webb was designed primarily to detect infrared light. For infrared observation, James Webb maintains a low temperature unlike Hubble, which operates at room temperature, and a large sun screen was installed to block the hot sun.
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It is known that James Webb’s observation performance was about 100 times better than Hubble’s by using a giant gold-plated mirror and infrared observation tool. It also has a special camera that incorporates a spectrometer, which is powerful enough to detect tiny lights from Jupiter’s moons.
NASA, which landed James Webb in the L2 region, will wait a few weeks for the probe to completely cool down, after which it will operate and test the onboard equipment. NASA said the first observations of the James Webb telescope will begin this summer.
