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  • BBC Sky at Night

    BULLETIN

    Feb 17, 2022 5 minutes

    Webb reaches its final destination

    The space telescope has saved most of its fuel on the journey, extending the mission

    The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) arrived at its final destination on 24 January at 7:05pm UT.

    Webb is an infrared telescope with a 6.5m-wide mirror, making it the largest one ever deployed in space when it launched on 25 December 2021. A month later, it arrived at the gravitationally stable second Lagrange point (L2), located 1.5 million km from Earth. JWST fired its thrusters for five minutes to add around 1.6 metres per second to its speed. Though little more than a walking pace, this was all that was needed to put it into its final ‘halo’ orbit, moving in an ellipse around the L2 point.

    This mid-course correction burn occurred

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