The James Webb Space Telescope notched a cool milestone — literally — during its months-long calibration for deep-space observations.
The final instrument aboard the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope finally achieved its operating temperature of just above absolute zero. The successful cooling ensures that the observatory will be able to probe cosmic objects in infrared light, according to a Wednesday (April 13) statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, which leads U.S. work on the instrument, called the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
The telescope has been cooling ever since its launch on Dec. 25, 2021, bringing it to the frigid temperatures necessary for MIRI to accurately detect infrared light, which manifests as heat. MIRI needs to be at a temperature is a little below 7 degrees Kelvin, which is equivalent to minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 266 degrees Celsius). And the complex cooling procedures went very well, thanks lots of practice.
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