NASA’s telescope should allow scientists to study the formation and evolution of galaxies. He is now almost ready to begin his mission: the 6th stage of his installation has been completed.
This is an important step that NASA has just taken: the James Webb Space Telescope has completed the 6th phase of its preparation, during which it aligned its mirror to the other instruments. It is now almost ready to accomplish its mission: it only has one step left before it is fully operational.
It was NASA that announced on April 1 that this 6th phase was over, and that it had even been carried out brilliantly. ” In general, the alignment process starts with the most important corrections before moving on to the finer corrections “says Chanda Walker, one of the NASA scientists in charge of controlling the JWST instruments. ” But the first stages of adjustment were so conclusive that we did not need to make the finer corrections “.
The mirrors were aligned with the NIRCam
The process of setting up the JWST takes longer than for previous NASA telescopes, and that’s to be expected: “ the primary mirror of the James Webb consists of 18 individual mirror segments, which must work together as a single high-precision optical surface “, explains the site of the American space agency. In addition to these mirrors, the telescope is also equipped with sensors, with which the mirror must be aligned. In all, the 7 stages of setting up the JWST have a total duration of 3 months.
For this 6th stage, the 18 mirrors of the James Webb were aligned with the NIRCam, a near infrared camera which should allow, among other things, to search forsupernovae, to measure the distortion of light caused by dark matter, and to detect the stars that appeared after the Big Bang.
Now that this 6th step is over, the mirrors are now aligned with all the other instruments on board the JWST: the NIRSpec, a near infrared spectrometer; the MIRI, a mid-infrared instrument; and NIRISS, a near-infrared imager and slitless spectrograph.
So there is only the last step left, the one during which the teams will chase the last mistakes and make the very last adjustments, before the JWST is completely ready. On its website, NASA explains that it is “ correct the last errors of positioning of the mirrors, and to make a final check of all the instruments “.
Even if the James Webb is not yet fully operational, it can already take magnificent pictures: on March 16, NASA shared one of the first pictures of the telescope, where we can see a super star.