The James Webb telescope is fully aligned. NASA shared the update in a new post on Thursday, April 28. The space-based telescope will help usher in a new age for space observation. The telescope reached its final destination earlier this year. Since then, NASA has slowly been preparing it for operations. NASA will use the telescope to give astronomers access to data and observations they can’t get with Hubble and other older telescope systems.
The James Webb telescope is fully aligned
Despite James Webb being fully aligned, there’s still at least one final series of preparations to meet. NASA said that the spacecraft will now enter a phase known as science instrument commissioning. This will take around two months to complete. During that process, the team will turn its attention to each science instrument on the James Webb.
The space agency made each instrument is using a variety of highly sophisticated detectors. NASA has equipped these detectors with different lenses, filters, masks, and other equipment it customized for the spacecraft. The team will configure each detector over the next two months to ensure they are running at peak condition.
Once the team has completed all the configurations, though, the telescope will be ready for scientific operations. But what exactly does the James Webb telescope being fully aligned mean? Well, it essentially means the team has aligned all of the sensors for the best quality image capturing. This means it will provide the sharpest and highest quality images they are capable of. In fact, NASA says the test images are coming back better than