The James Webb space telescope, the largest and most powerful space telescope achieved a major milestone on Wednesday as It has successfully deployed all of its mirrors and the testing of the individual mirror segments is now complete.

Nearly a month after it left Earth, the James Webb Telescope is set to complete its 15,00,000-kilometre-long journey to its destination from where it will observe the birth of our universe. James Webb Space Telescope Deployment Complete As Mirror Unfolds

The world's most powerful observatory is set to arrive at the second Lagrange point (L2) as engineers prep it for a final correction burn that will place it in its desired orbit.

Lagrange points refer to locations where the Earth’s gravitational pull completely balances out the Sun’s much stronger gravity

Erin Wolf, Webb program manager at Ball Aerospace, explained how the mirrors were moved and tested. “The motors made over a million revolutions this week…The mirror deployment team incrementally moved all 132 actuators located on the back of the primary mirror segments and secondary mirror…Using six motors that deploy each segment approximately half the length of a paper clip, these actuators clear the mirrors from their launch restraints and give each segment enough space to later be adjusted in other directions,” Wolf said.

He added that the process of telescope alignment will take approximately three months.  James Webb Space Telescope Enters 'Period Of Cooldown'; Here Are 5 Latest Updates

On January 24, the team is expected to fire Webb’s thrusters to insert the telescope into its orbit around the Sun. The telescope will be nearly 1 million miles from Earth.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 24, 2022 12:46 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).