James Webb completed the preliminary alignment of 18 segments of the main mirror optical system and obtained one in-focus image of the test target star HD 84406.
Currently, the focused beams from each segment of the telescope's main mirror are superimposed on each other and provide a single image of the star to the infrared sensor of the NIRCam scientific instrument.
The James Webb ground control team began the fourth stage of its preparation for work. It will align the main mirror to eliminate vertical misalignment between the segments, as well as fine-tune their positions relative to each other.
The process of focusing and aligning images on each segment of a large mirror, during which the positioning errors of the primary mirror segments were corrected and the alignment of the secondary mirror was corrected.
On December 25, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched into space on an Ariane-5 rocket.
On January 8, 2022, James Webb completed a full deployment of the primary mirror.
On January 24, James Webb completed one of the key stages of its journey - it arrived at the orbit of the Lagrange point L2 of the Sun-Earth system, located at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
In mid-February, a NASA team tuned each of Webb's 18 primary mirror segments to assemble 18 unfocused copies of a single star into a planned hexagonal formation.
The parameters of the James Webb telescope can be tracked on this page of the NASA website. Webb is also available for study in NASA's Eyes on the Solar System 3D browser application.
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