Month: January 2022

Engineers activating the James Webb Space Telescope decided Sunday to hold off tightening up the observatory’s critical sunshade to allow more time to check out the performance of its power systems and overall behavior now that several major deployments are complete.

Flying outbound from Earth at a distance of more than 400,000 miles, the James Webb Space Telescope extended two booms Friday and unfurled the mission’s five-layer sunshield to the size of a tennis court, notching a major milestone for the observatory after a nail-biting New Year’s Eve for astronomers and engineers on Earth.