Major Milestone: NASA's Webb Telescope Does A First In Space As It Unfolds Gold Coated Primary Mirror

The unfolding of Webb's primary mirror marks the successful completion of the final stage of all major spacecraft deployments to prepare for science operations.

The NASA James Webb Space Telescope is fully deployed. (Photos: Twitter/@NASAWebb)

New Delhi: The NASA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), or Webb, the most powerful and complex space observatory ever built, has achieved a major milestone. The revolutionary telescope fully deployed its 21-foot, gold-coated primary mirror, on January 9.
The unfolding of Webb's primary mirror marks the successful completion of the final stage of all major spacecraft deployments to prepare for science operations.

The official twitter handle of the Webb Space Telescope posted that 50 major deployments were complete with the successful deployment and latching of the telescope's last mirror wing. Also, 178 pins have been released, and more than 20 years of work realised. 

#NASAWebb is fully deployed! 🎉

With the successful deployment & latching of our last mirror wing, that's:
50 major deployments, complete.
178 pins, released.
20+ years of work, realized.

Next to #UnfoldTheUniverse: traveling out to our orbital destination of Lagrange point 2! pic.twitter.com/mDfmlaszzV

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) January 8, 2022

Webb, which is a joint effort between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency, will explore every phase of cosmic history from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe.

The space telescope has taken on its final form, and for the next six months, it will cool down, calibrate its instruments, and prepare to unfold the universe. 
After the successful deployment of the primary mirror, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the US space agency has achieved another engineering milestone, according to a NASA statement.
He added that the James Webb Space Telescope is an unprecedented mission that is on the precipice of seeing the light from the first galaxies and discovering the mysteries of our universe.
When Webb was fitted inside the nose cone of the Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket atop which it was launched, the two wings of the telescope's primary mirror had been folded.

Webb has completed other critical spacecraft deployments such as the successful deployment of its sunshield.
On January 7 and January 8, the two primary mirror wings, or side panels, were deployed and latched successfully.
Webb has 18 hexagonal mirror segments which were engineered to fold back to reduce the telescope's overall profile for flight, and each side panel holds three primary mirror segments.
The unfolding of the hexagonal segments of the largest primary mirror ever launched into space was a multi-day process.
Mission Operations Center ground control at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore helped deploy the side panels of the world’s largest and most complex space science telescope.

What Is Next For Webb?

Webb will now begin moving its 18 primary mirror segments to align the telescope optics. In order to flex each mirror, the ground team will command 126 actuators on the backsides of the segments. This alignment will take months to complete. After this, the team will calibrate the science instruments. Webb is expected to deliver its first images this summer.
Quoting Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate in NASA Headquarters in Washington, the NASA statement said that Webb's successful deployment exemplifies the best of what NASA has to offer, which is the space agency's willingness to attempt bold and challenging things in the name of discoveries still unknown.
Next, Webb will undergo a third mid-course correction burn, which is one of three planned burns to place the telescope precisely in orbit around the second Lagrange point, or L2, nearly one million miles from Earth.
L2 is Webb’s final orbital position, where its sunshield will protect it from light from the Sun, Earth, and Moon that could interfere with observations of infrared light.
Webb is a powerful time machine with infrared vision that will look back in time, more than 13.5 billion years, to see the first stars and galaxies forming out of the darkness of the early universe.
JWST will use infrared light to observe celestial objects with much higher resolution than ever before, and to study our own solar system as well as distant worlds.

George L Robinson, Webb program director at NASA Headquarters, said that the successful completion of all of the Webb Space Telescope's deployments is historic, because this is the first time a NASA-led mission has ever attempted to complete a complex sequence to unfold an observatory in space.