NASA Releases Progress Photos of James Webb Mirror Alignment

Yesterday, NASA released images showing the progress that Webb engineers have made in aligning the telescopes 18 hexagonal mirror segments. There are seven total phases in the mirror alignment process that must be completed over the next few months before James Webb is ready to begin making science observations, and the team has just completed the first three of them.

This gif shows the “before” and “after” images from Segment Alignment, when the team corrected large positioning errors of its primary mirror segments and updated the alignment of the secondary mirror. Credit: NASA/STScI