Spacecraft
James Webb Space Telescope
The largest telescope ever flown: a 6.5-metre segmented mirror behind a sunshade the size of a tennis court, which has to unfold itself after launch because nothing that size fits in a rocket. It works in the infrared, cooled to about −233 °C, which is what lets it see the first galaxies and look through dust into the places where stars are forming.
- Agency
- NASA/ESA/CSA
- Launched
- 2021-12-25 - still working
Path
A slow loop about L2, a balance point 1.5 million km further from the Sun than the Earth. There is nothing there to go round - the Sun and the Earth together hold it - and it takes about six months and a small burn every few weeks to stay on it.
Along the way
- Arrived at L2, a month after launch
- First pictures released
Everything the map shows is worked out in your browser from published orbital data - nothing on it is a stored picture of where things were.