Paris, April 30, 2022 (AFP) – The James Webb space telescope, located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, has completed the alignment phase of its science instruments, which are already operational, NASA announced.
Its four powerful instruments, three image processors and a spectrometer were successfully aligned with the main mirror (6.5 meters in diameter), whose deployment ended in early January, two weeks after the launch of the James Webb Telescope (JWST) .
Each instrument has reached its “operating temperature” and is ready for use, NASA explained in a statement.
Awaiting the arrival of the first scientific observations (scheduled for the summer), it was confirmed that the instruments are capable of “capturing clear and well-oriented images”, for example, of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy, satellite of the Via Milky Way, which was taken by the Mirim instrument.
“This first image is magnificent, because we already have the quality we were looking for,” wrote Pierre-Olivier Lagage, scientific manager of Mirim at the French scientific research organization CEA, on Twitter.
“Everything is going perfectly and I’m sure that with the JWST we will make science progress at giant steps,” he added.
“These test images show what can be achieved among people from different countries and continents when there is a bold scientific vision to explore the universe,” said Lee Feinberg, commander of JWST telescope components on NASA’s Goddard Space Flight.
The James Webb telescope, which cost 10 billion dollars, holds the hope of astronomers around the world, as it will allow the observation of the first galaxies, formed about 200 million years after the Big Bang.
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