After a month of travelling through space, the James Webb Space Telescope has reached its parking spot 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, but it isn’t ready to start studying the universe just yet
) has arrived at its new home. On 24 January, the spacecraft fired its thrusters for about 5 minutes to place it into its final orbit, and now it is ready to calibrate its mirrors and scientific instruments before peering out into the universe.
The telescope is at a gravitationally stable spot called a Lagrange point, where all the forces on the spacecraft balance out to keep it in place, orbiting the sun along with Earth. This particular Lagrange point, called L2, is about 1.5 million kilometres away from the planet in the direction opposite to the sun.
Aside from the fact that parking near a Lagrange point will save fuel, L2 is a particularly good spot for observing the sky without worrying about heat or light from the sun, Earth or the moon. JWST faces away from all of those objects, with itsThe telescope requires extreme cold to function, which the sunshield will also provide.
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James Webb Space Telescope arrives at new home in spaceChelsea “Foxanne” Gohd joined Space.com in 2018 and is now a Senior Writer, writing about everything from climate change to planetary science and human spaceflight in both articles and on-camera in videos. With a degree in Public Health and biological sciences, Chelsea has written and worked for institutions including the American Museum of Natural History, Scientific American, Discover Magazine Blog, Astronomy Magazine and Live Science. When not writing, editing or filming something space-y, Chelsea 'Foxanne' Gohd is writing music and performing as Foxanne, even launching a song to space in 2021 with Inspiration4. You can follow her on Twitter chelsea_gohd and foxannemusic.
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