The James Webb Space Telescope, on a long and winding journey to its job site a million miles from Earth, has begun the key task of unfurling a giant umbrella-like shield to protect its delicate instruments from the intense radiation of the sun.
The deployment of the shade — one of numerous maneuvers that must be performed flawlessly for the $10 billion telescope to function properly — began Tuesday with the successful lowering of two arms known as Utilized Pallet Structures.
They house five ultra-thin membranes made of a shiny material called Kapton packed inside, along with the cables and pulleys needed to fully deploy. NASA expects the slow and deliberate process of unfolding the tennis-court-sized shield to continue at least through the weekend.
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