On Monday, January 24, the James Webb Space Telescope will be launched into orbit around the Sun at the second Lagrange point, L2. It took him less than a month to reach his destination, almost a million miles from Earth.
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The telescope was launched on December 25 from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. On January 8, he completed his decomposition in space and continued his journey to the destination calmly. Upon reaching its destination, it will be at Lagrange’s point II, abbreviated as L2.
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Course correction
As informed NASA’s blog, on January 24, engineers plan to make appropriate adjustments to the course of the James Webb Space Telescope to place it in the desired orbit, almost 1 million miles from Earth.
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According to the scientists who are working on the project, L2 is the perfect location for an observatory. At this point, the Sun and Earth (as well as the Moon) are always on one side of space, which allows the telescope to continuously shade the telescope’s optics and instruments. This allows them to cool down due to infrared sensitivity, but still have access to almost half of the sky at any time for observation.
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This way, by stopping at L2, you can see any point in the sky over time. Even if not immediately, it is enough to wait a few months to travel further around the sun and see more of the sky that was previously “behind” the sun.
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Only advantages
However, the advantages of the determined Lagrange point II do not end there. L2 is the site of gravitational equilibrium, so the telescope can easily maintain its orbit there. For the telescope itself, it is simpler, easier and more efficient to orbit L2 than to be at the exact point.
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Additionally, by orbiting a place, instead of being exactly there, the telescope will never cause the Earth to eclipse the Sun, which is necessary for Webb’s thermal stability and power generation.
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Conference with NASA
On Monday, January 24, scientists and engineers at the James Webb Space Telescope will answer questions about the latest milestones of the mission. The broadcast on the NASA Science Live website will begin at 21:00 CET, followed by a media conference call at 16:00.
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It will be broadcast live on the Internet on the NASA Science Live website, as well as on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The audio from the conference call will be broadcast live on the agency’s website.
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