At 7:50 pm EST, on December 25, 2021, the James Webb Area Telescope initiated its first course correction burn to regulate its trajectory towards its ultimate orbit. Credit score: NASA Goddard Area Flight Heart
At 7:50 pm EST, Webb’s first mid-course correction burn started. It lasted 65 minutes and is now full. This burn is one among two milestones which are time essential — the primary was the solar array deployment, which occurred shortly after launch.
This burn adjusts Webb’s trajectory towards the second Lagrange point, generally often called L2. After launch, Webb must make its personal mid-course thrust correction maneuvers to get to its orbit. That is by design: Webb obtained an intentional slight under-burn from the Ariane-5 that launched it into house, as a result of it’s not attainable to right for overthrust. If Webb will get an excessive amount of thrust, it can’t flip round to transfer again towards Earth as a result of that might instantly expose its telescope optics and construction to the Solar, overheating them and aborting the science mission earlier than it could actually even start.
Due to this fact, we ease as much as the right velocity in three phases, being cautious by no means to ship an excessive amount of thrust — there will likely be three mid-course correction maneuvers in complete.
After this burn, no key milestones are time essential, so the order, location, timing, and length of deployments might change.
You possibly can observe where Webb is in the process and examine upcoming deployments. NASA has an in depth plan to deploy the Webb Area Telescope over a roughly two-week interval.The deployment course of isn’t an computerized hands-off sequence; it’s human-controlled. The group displays Webb in real-time and should pause the nominal deployment at any time. Because of this the deployments might not happen precisely within the order or on the occasions initially deliberate.
