NASA will hold a virtual media briefing at noon EDT Wednesday, March 16, to provide an update on the James Webb Space Telescope’s mirror alignment. The briefing will air live on NASA TV, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.
Participants will share progress made in aligning Webb’s mirrors, resulting in a fully focused image of a single star. NASA will make imagery demonstrating the completion of this milestone available on the agency’s website at 11:30 a.m., prior to the briefing.
The James Webb Space Telescope is a space telescope developed by NASA, ESA and CSA to succeed the Hubble Space Telescope as NASA's flagship astrophysics mission. Its primary mirror, the Optical Telescope Element, is composed of 18 hexagonal mirror segments which combine to create a 6.5 m diameter mirror, considerably larger than Hubble's 2.4 m mirror. This will allow JWST to provide improved infrared resolution and sensitivity over Hubble, and will enable a broad range of investigations across the fields of astronomy and cosmology, including observing some of the most distant events and objects in the universe, such as the formation of the first galaxies.
Sun-Earth L2