Sharjah24 – AFP: The most powerful space telescope ever built completed a tricky two-week-long deployment phase Saturday, unfolding its final golden mirror panel, as it readies to study every phase of cosmic history.
Engineering teams in the James Webb Space Telescope's control room cheered as confirmation came back that its final wing was deployed and latched into place.
"I'm emotional about it, what an amazing milestone," Thomas Zurbuchen, a senior NASA engineer, said during the live video feed as stargazers worldwide celebrated.
Because the telescope was too large to fit into a rocket's nose cone in its operational configuration, it was transported folded up.
Unfurling has been a complex and risky task, "arguably the most challenging deployment program ever done by NASA," said NASA engineer Mike Menzel.
On Saturday morning, engineers sent a command from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland for the final section of golden mirror to unfold.
According to NASA, after the mirror was latched into place at 1:17 PM (1817 GMT), "the team declared all major deployments successfully completed."
"I want to tell you just how excited and emotional I am right now," said Zurbuchen on the live video feed. "We have a deployed telescope on orbit."
Webb, the successor to Hubble, blasted off in an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana on December 25, and is heading to its orbital point, a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth.
Though Webb will reach its space destination, known as the second Lagrange point, in a matter of weeks, it still has around another five and a half months of setup to go.
"While the journey is not complete, I join the Webb team in breathing a little easier and imagining the future breakthroughs bound to inspire the world," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Next steps include aligning the telescope's optics, and calibrating its scientific instruments.
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