We're almost there.
James Webb has already taken its first images of stars and its first selfie, and now, it's time to finish calibrating the powerful instruments that will power the $10 billion telescope mission, a blog post from NASA explains.
NASA confirmed that the first stage of mirror alignment is complete, meaning we are another crucial step closer to full deployment. One down, two to go.
Last week, February 14, NASA revealedselfie images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, in which it showed off its partially aligned golden mirrors from the perspective of an onboard camera. Three days prior, the telescope took its first images of space, showing a composite of one star from 18 different angles.
Now, mission control has completed the next step in aligning the observatory's mirrors, so that they are all aligned to perfectly focus on that one star. When that happens, James Webb will be fully operational, meaning it will be free to start taking images that will provide new insight into the early universe, potentially habitable exoplanets, and possibly even alien life.
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