NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the agency's successor to the famous Hubble telescope, launched on Dec. 25, 2021 on a mission to study the earliest stars and peer back farther into the universe's past than ever before. Webb is currently on a 29-day trip to its observing spot, Lagrange point 2 (L2), nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million km). It is the largest and most powerful space telescope ever launched. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is in good health and will begin tensioning its huge sunshield today, its mission team said today. In a media teleconference, NASA officials said Webb will begin tightening the tension on the 1st layer of the five-layer sunshield on Webb today after two days of rest and power system optimization.
Two issues occurred over the New Year's Day holiday weekend.
First, Webb's solar arrays were not generating as much power as they could due to their factory settings. At no point was the space telescope in need of power, but NASA rebalanced the arrays so that they can now work at their peak efficiency. Second, the motors used to tension Webb's sunshield were not staying cool enough as flight controllers preferred. They commanded Webb to change its orientation in space in a way that will keep its motors cooler during the deployment phase. With both of those fixes in, Webb appears to be doing well in its deployment. The tensioning process for Webb's sunshield should take at least three days, NASA officials said.
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