Cape Canaveral.- NASA’s new space telescope has captured its first starlight and even snapped a selfie of its giant mirror. The 18 segments of the James Webb Space Telescope’s main mirror appear to be working well a month and a half into the mission, officials said Friday.
The telescope’s first target was a star 258 light-years away, in the constellation Ursa Major. “That was a really amazing moment,” said Marshall Perrin, a fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
In the coming months, the hexagonal segments will be positioned and focused as one, allowing science observations from the end of June.
The $10 billion observatory — which uses ultra-red sensors — is billed as a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and will search for light from the first stars and galaxies formed in the universe 14 billion years ago. It will also examine the atmospheres of distant worlds for signs of life.
NASA did not detect a serious problem with Hubble’s mirror until after it was launched in 1990. It took more than three years before spacewalking astronauts were able to correct the images generated by the telescope.
While everything looks good now with Webb, engineers must rule out any major mirror failures by next month, said Lee Feinberg, director of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Webb’s mirror is the largest ever launched into space. An infrared camera on the telescope took a picture of the mirror as a segment pointed at the star.
NASA released the selfie, along with a mosaic of light from each of the mirror’s segments. The 18 points of light look like fireflies flying against the background of the night sky.
After 20 years with the project, “it’s incredibly satisfying” to see that everything is working so well so far, said Marcia Rieke, of the University of Arizona and lead scientist for the infrared camera.
Webb was launched from South America in December and reached its assigned orbit last month.
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