Today, a month after launching from Earth, the JWST has safely made its way to its L2 orbit, a million miles away. Everyone can let out a sigh of relief now, as our 10 billion dollar investment is on its way to being paid off. Throughout the journey, the telescope had to unfurl itself, and also had to make tiny course corrections until it reached it’s destination, and all of it which succeeded.
Right now we have to wait a few more months as they test and calibrate the telescope’s instruments (and to allow them to cool), but when it’s all good to go we should be peering the farthest out into space than we ever have. The JWST will study distant galaxies, exoplanets, and basically look back in time to the earliest periods of our universe.
