# James Webb Space Telescope

*Spacecraft*

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 |
| From the Sun | 152,008,323 km (-38,561 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 1,246,847 km (-6,796 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 4 s |
| Travelling at | 30.1 km/s |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-09-05, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## 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

- 2022-01-24 — Arrived at L2, a month after launch
- 2022-07-12 — First pictures released

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=jwst
- The mission's own page: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/jwst/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt