IT House January 9 news, Beijing time around 00:00 on January 9, the most expensive and powerful infrared band space telescope built by humans so far: James Webb Space Telescope, successfully completed the deployment of the last part of the main mirror, and completed the lock. This marks that the $10 billion telescope machinery is working normally, and more than 20 years of research and development and manufacturing work has finally ushered in success, and countless people's hanging hearts can be put down.
Next, the James Webb Space Telescope will continue to fly to the Lagrange L2 point halo orbit with a period of about 6 months; then, it will take about 5 months of mirror tuning, instrument debugging, and other test work to finally shoot the first picture.
IT Home learned that the telescope has successfully completed the unfolding and tightening of five layers of large-area shading film. These films are used to block sunlight and keep the telescope body at a very low temperature to reduce interference.
The main telescope mirror consists of 18 hexagonal lenses with an aperture of about 6.5 meters and an area of 25.4 square meters. The lenses are made of high-purity metal beryllium and the surface is almost absolutely smooth. In order to improve the ability to reflect infrared rays, as well as to protect the lens, the surface of the mirror is plated with a layer of gold. Due to the large size of the lenses, there may be some deformation, and the scientists are equipped with 7 fine-tuning motors on the back of each lens, which can finely control the deformation of the lenses.
Over the next few days, the ground team at the James Webb Space Telescope will operate the 126 actuators to correct the lenses, which will take months to complete.
NASA Director Bill Nelson said the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope marks another milestone for NASA. Built by NASA in collaboration with the European Space Agency ESA and the Canadian Space Agency, the telescope will observe the earliest scenes of the universe, promising to see the glow of the first galaxies in the early days of the universe, with the goal of observing objects 13.5 billion light-years away.