James Webb telescope reaches final stable position 1 mn miles from Earth

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) successfully fired a planned rocket on-course correction to manoeuvre itself into a permanent stable position at a point between the Earth and the Sun, almost one million miles from its home planet, NASA said on Monday.

"Today, at 2:00 p.m. EST, Webb fired its onboard thrusters for nearly five minutes (297 seconds) to complete the final post-launch course correction to Webb's trajectory," NASA said in a blog report.

"This mid-course correction burn inserted Webb toward its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, nearly 1 million miles away from the Earth."

The giant golden mirror unfolded fully about 700,000 miles from Earth that lift off on Christmas Day last month.

The ten billion dollar project spanning over three decades, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, hopes to look further back in time than ever before - to find out more about the creation of the first stars and the beginnings of our Universe.

Webb could help researchers understand the origins of the universe and begin to answer key questions about our existence, such as where we came from and if we're alone in the cosmos.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific complement to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA.