National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s James Webb Space Telescope, the agency’s successor to the famous Hubble Telescope IS on a mission to study the earliest stars and peer back farther into the universe’s past than ever before. It launched last year on Christmas Day.

The James Webb Space Telescope continues to cool down to its operating temperature of minus 369.4 degrees Fahrenheit ( minus 223 degrees Celsius) as it prepares to take its first scientific images of the distant universe this summer. One of the telescope’s four instruments, the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), needs some extra help from a dedicated cryocooler as it needs to get to an even colder temperature of minus 447 degrees F ( minus 266 degrees C), only 12 degrees F (7 degrees C) above absolute zero, the temperature where the motion of atoms stops.

After applying the Field of View correction, the key thing left to address is the removal of any small, residual positioning errors in the primary mirror segments. They measure and make corrections using the Fine Phasing process.. They will do a final check of the image quality across each of the science instruments; once this is verified, the wave front sensing and controls process will be complete.
As they go through the seven steps of mirror alignment, they may find that they need to iterate earlier steps as well. The process is flexible and modular to allow for iteration. After roughly three months of aligning the telescope, they will be ready to proceed to commissioning the instruments.

WHERE IS WEBB? It’s a data-driven infographic that shows the status of Webb on its journey to L2 orbit. The page constantly updates as Webb travels, deploys, and cools to operating temperature. The page comes alive a few minutes after LIFTOFF (it is inactive until that point) and starts tracking distance at about 28 minutes after liftoff once Webb separates from the launch vehicle. It will actively track Webb’s travel for a month after launch and track the cooling process until Webb reaches operating temperature.

You can track Webb here – https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html