james webb

NASA engineers have begun a crucial phase in deploying the James Webb Space Telescope. The engineers have started to tighten the tension in its tennis court-sized sunshield. The stretching of the first three layers of the five-layer sunshield was successful and the final two layers will be deployed today, January 4, the space agency said. A successful deployment of all the five layers is critical for the $10-billion (roughly Rs. 74,525 crore) observatory to remain cool enough to be able to do its job. Once fully…

James Webb Space Telescope has completed the complex process of deploying its kite-shaped sunshield. The sunshield, about the size of a tennis court, has five layers. The first three were deployed initially and the last two were done late last night. Deploying all five layers was crucial for the $10-billion (roughly Rs. 74,525 crore) space observatory. The sunshield will keep the telescope cool enough to enable it to begin its quest to capture images of faraway stars and planets.NASA said the tensioning of the sunshield…

James Webb Space Telescope, a day after fully tensioning the sunshield, has now completed another complex procedure. The space observatory's secondary mirror was deployed using what a Webb engineer described as the “world's most sophisticated tripod.” The 2.4-feet-wide mirror is located on the tips of three carbon fibre tubes which extend out from the large primary mirror. Each of the fibre tubes are 25 feet long and designed to withstand adverse impacts in the space environment. The joints and motors used for this…

Through the past week, NASA engineers have been working diligently to deploy major equipment and tools aboard James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), including its sunshield and secondary mirror. On Saturday, January 8,  the primary camera of the $10-billion (roughly Rs. 74,340 crore) space observatory will be deployed, which will study the origin of the Universe and exoplanets. With this, the major deployments of the most powerful telescope ever sent into space will conclude. After finishing the unprecedented process of…

James Webb Space Telescope scientists said they have completed all major structural deployments of the $10-billion (roughly Rs. 74,000 crore) observatory in space. What now starts is the primary mission of the telescope, they added. James Webb Space Telescope was launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket on December 25. It is so big that it had to be folded to fit in the rocket. After the rocket released the folded telescope in space, scientists carried out complex processes to deploy its tools, including the 21-foot,…

As NASA completes all major deployments of the James Webb Space Telescope and the observatory enters a “cooling” period, the agency is sharing some interesting facts about the $10-billion (roughly Rs. 74,100 core) observatory. These include some lenses which are made out of salt. But why does this infrared telescope need a “salty” lens? In a new video, scientists working on the telescope shared why salt is vital to the deep space observatory. And the James Webb telescope uses not just one but three kinds of salt…

NASA said it has completed deploying all the hexagonal mirror segments of its James Webb Space Telescope. The delicate operation to move the $10-billion (roughly Rs. 74,500 crore) space observatory's individual mirror segments out of their launch positions took nearly a week, during which the motors made over a million revolutions. The space agency said engineers sent commands to tiny motors, called actuators, to slowly move each segment about half the length of a paper clip so that each of them is positioned in a way…

A recent research based on Hubble Space Telescope findings showed that black holes could go against their all-absorbing nature at times and may aid creation. The research showed a supermassive black hole at the centre of a dwarf galaxy, some 30 million light-years away, creating stars rather than swallowing it. The black hole is apparently contributing to the firestorm of new star formation taking place in the Henize 2-10 galaxy in the southern constellation Pyxis, NASA said.Usually lying at the centres of large galaxies…

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is set to orbit the Lagrange point 2 in relation to the Earth and the Sun. But, what does it really mean? Where is Lagrange point 2 located and why is it of note? Explaining the intricacies, the space agency recently tweeted about the orbit that the telescope will follow over the next few months. In the first tweet in a thread, NASA wrote, “So…you've heard that the Webb telescope will be orbiting Lagrange point 2. But what even is that, anyway? And how do you orbit something that isn't an…

Hubble Space Telescope provides astronomers with breathtaking images of the cosmos for deeper studies. Recently, the telescope shared yet another strikingly beautiful image. This time, it captured the NGC 3318 galaxy, which lies in the constellation Vela, located about 115 million light-years away from the Earth. The image was shared by the European Space Agency (ESA) on its official Instagram handle. Stating that the spiral arms of the galaxy were lazily draped across in the image, ESA added that “Vela was originally…