As of just after 12 PM Eastern Standard Time on January 18th, 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope has completed a tantalizing 92.5207% of its long journey to its L2 orbital insertion. An astonishing one million miles (1,609,344 km) away from home. But there's much work to be done before NASA and ESA scientists are even remotely ready for the big satellite to start snapping photos of aliens.
With the sun shield now deployed and keeping the sensitive equipment on the other side nice and cool, it's time to start sorting the calibration of the JWSTs enormous primary mirror. The main mirror onboard is comprised of 18 smaller mirrors shaped like hexagons.
When these mirrors deploy and combine into one, it should make for a camera mirror as big as 6.5 meters (21.32 feet) across or nearly as big as a full tennis court. As funny as it would be to see Novak Djokavic practice his backswing on JWST's main mirror, the calibration process is no laughing matter.
Older fans of space flight no doubt remember the difficult deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope aboard Space Shuttle Discovery over 30 years ago. This deployment was fraught with malfunctions and difficulties that required human crewed service missions to correct. Only then did Hubble begin taking breathtaking images that are still celebrated today.
If such issues occur so far away from home on the JWST, there's a snowball's chance in heck of any mission being able to save it. It's a process that's as painstakingly slow and deliberate as it is nerve-racking to watch in its entirety. Billions in government funding and decades of research rely on the mirrors actuating into position correctly.
The actuation of the main mirror is expected to take as long as ten days, with a further three months before calibration is complete. We can only hope that the end results are beyond humanity's wildest dreams when the deed is done. Check out real time progress on the spacecraft in the video below.
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