James Webb is (already) coming to a crucial moment in his work

As the whole world stared at their Christmas tree, The atmosphere in Kourou is completely different. Although originally scheduled for release on December 18th, it gave everyone plenty of time to come home and celebrate the holidays with their families, but in the end things did not go as planned.

In fact, after many hiccups and a final weather problem, the most important start of the year, if not decades, took place. From the ESA base in Crowe, French Guiana, the Ariane 5 rocket launched with the James Webb Space Telescope. With them, the hopes of millions of scientists and activists flew.

After the first few minutes in the atmosphere, the weather calmed down and this first step went well. But this little opportunity did not last. In fact, Traveling over a million kilometers Our Earth-Sun system cannot travel in space towards point L2.

The 29 days that anything can happen are horrible

During these 29 days of mopping, the space telescope must not be particularly damaged, deviate from its path or have dire consequences for this mission, which will cost $ 10 billion.

But when it has been in space for more than 72 hours now, the space telescope must carry out a very subtle maneuver to allow it to take the final shape of its design. In order to fully understand what awaits the space telescope in the coming hours, the American site The Verge compared it to a Swiss military knife, which is exactly that.

An important step after a 72-hour flight

As the article explains, the telescope was too large to fit any rocket in its final form. Therefore, care must be taken that nothing interferes with its deployment during the mission. This is the first time NASA has been forced to design a deployment program at this level of complexity.

Over the next few hours, the telescope would unfold its devices one by one. In this Norton ensemble that designed the “Origami of Space”, engineers like to call the heat the “Transformers Telescope” after the famous movie Saga. It remains to be seen whether the “web” will have the same successThe highest key.