Following its launch from French Guiana, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is cruising through space en route to its cosmic parking spot 1.5 million kilometers from Earth at Lagrange point L2.
The most powerful space telescope in history
The space telescope will take almost a month to complete the orbital insertion for which NASA has a detailed plan to deploy the entire telescope in about two weeks and orbit in a month. However, the process involves hundreds of individual human-controlled implementations , so a team of engineers will remotely control a complex sequence of commands until the entire conglomerate of steps is complete.
While on its historic journey to Lagrange 2, the US space agency has created a data-driven page called “Where's Webb? ” showing the status of the James Webb Special Telescope – the largest and most powerful space telescope ever launched – on its journey to L2 orbit. You can find things like distance from Earth, distance to home orbit, progress percentage, current speed, temperature, and much more.
Webb made his first and largest course correction on Saturday, December 25, after his launch into space. The third will occur on the 29th to enter its final orbit around the L2 point.
The telescope continues to move away from Earth and prepares for observations in the coming months.
