The James Webb Space Telescope has completed its alignment phase after proving it can capture “sharp, well-focused images” with all four of its scientific instruments, the agency said on Wednesday (April 28th). The milestone, which NASA unveiled with some new Webb images, allows the mission team to proceed with the commissioning of scientific instruments. The telescope will thus enter a new phase of preparation after several months of aligning mirrors and instruments. This next step will take about two months, with Webb still well on track to finish in June if all goes according to plan. “These images have profoundly changed the way I look at the universe,” Scott Acton, a wavefront scientist and Webb controller at Ball Aerospace, told NASA. “We are surrounded by a creation agreement; there are galaxies everywhere. I hope everyone in the world can see them.” It was a busy time for the $ 10 billion telescope since its launch on December 25, 2021. First, Webb had to launch in deep space, a process that took almost a month and then had a complex seven-step alignment process to go through. Each milestone has gone a long way according to plan, with only minor modifications required along the way. One week ago, Webb officials reported that the 18 hexagonal sections of the shooting range’s primary mirror had cooled almost completely to the temperatures in the deep space required to see sharp objects in infrared light. Now the mirrors seem to be ready, as they send “fully focused light” to each instrument, which in turn renders images. “The telescope’s optical performance continues to be better than the engineers’ most optimistic predictions,” NASA officials said in a statement, noting that the image quality was only “limited diffraction.” (This means that the only obstacle to seeing fine detail is the size of the telescope, despite a problem with its performance.) From now on, the body added, mirror alignments will only need minor adjustments. The next phase of work will include the commissioning of a scientific instrument, along with the calibration of a telescope. Commissioning of the instrument requires lenses, masks, filters and other equipment to work properly in different configurations to ensure that they can perform scientific work. In terms of calibration activities, there is a list of milestones that Webb must achieve before it can be declared operational. “The telescope will be commanded to point to different areas in the sky, where the total amount of sunlight hitting the observatory will vary to confirm thermal stability when changing targets,” NASA officials said of the calibration. “In addition, continuous maintenance observations every two days will monitor the alignment of the mirrors and, when necessary, apply corrections to keep the mirrors in their aligned positions,” they added. Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
