Eye wide open

[Skybird]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59914936


" It's done. The biggest astronomical mirror ever sent into space is assembled and ready for focusing. "


One could hear their sighs of relief from there to here!

[mapuc]

If you're interested you can follow it's path towards its goal L2. On this page.

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

Markus

[Buddahaid]

Remarkable heat shield. Is this the first object inserted in a LaGrange point? Just thinking out loud so to speak.
https://www.sideshow.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Eye-of-Sauron-740x370.jpeg

[Jimbuna]

Amazing!

[mapuc]

Indeed it is nothing but amazing. I think it's the first time we put a artificiel satellit in the L2 orbit.

From the page I linked to

"L2 is approximately 1 million miles from Earth (932056 miles/1.5M km to be exact). But Webb never actually arrives at L2, it is travelling to enter an orbit around L2. Webb's L2 orbit is very large in size and it enters its orbit before it reaches the linear distance between Earth and L2. Webb's orbit around L2 is known as a halo orbit which, rather than a single path, is an orbit that periodically varies through a series of paths around L2."

Markus

[Sean C]

I think it's the first time we put a artificiel satellit in the L2 orbit.

Not quite. There were five satellites which were at L2, but have since been moved - either to heliocentric orbits (orbiting the Sun), Earth orbit (and then to L1) or otherwise out of the L2 orbit.

There are currently two other satellites (The ESA Gaia probe and the joint Russian-German high-energy astrophysics observatory) which are at L2. There are at least eight more satellites planned for L2 orbit.

See this Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points#L2) for more info.