Webb Telescope completes first multi-instrument alignment

The sixth stage of aligning NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's mirrors to its scientific instruments so they will create the most accurate and focused images possible has concluded. While the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) continues its cooldown, optics teams have successfully aligned the rest of the observatory's onboard instruments to Webb's mirrors. Previous alignment efforts were so accurate that the team concluded no additional adjustments to the secondary mirror are necessary until the seventh and final stage, which will involve MIRI when it has fully cooled.

"As a general rule, the commissioning process starts with coarse corrections and then moves into fine corrections. The early secondary mirror coarse corrections, however, were so successful that the fine corrections in the first iteration of Phase Six were unnecessary," said Chanda Walker, Webb wavefront sensing and control scientist, Ball Aerospace. "This accomplishment was due to many years of planning and great teamwork among the wavefront sensing team."

The Axiom-1 crew launches today—are these guys tourists, astronauts, or what?



A crew of four private citizens is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station today on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center.

This is the Axiom-1 mission, named after the private company, Axiom Space, that organized the flight. This mission will make history, as it is the first completely private mission to the International Space Station. The orbiting laboratory was created decades ago to foster international cooperation in space at a time when spaceflight was almost solely the province of large, powerful nations.

But the laboratory, at least for the United States, has become an important beachhead in low Earth orbit for commercial activity. NASA astronauts have for years conducted private research experiments, deployed CubeSats, and performed other government-sanctioned activities to foster commercial spaceflight.

The Axiom-1 mission will take the next step. Commander Michael López-Alegría of Spain and the United States, Pilot Larry Connor of the United States, and Mission Specialists Eytan Stibbe of Israel and Mark Pathy of Canada will spend about 10 days in space and a little more than a week on the station. Their time will be their own, and they will conduct a bit of research and also enjoy the experience of living in space.

For Axiom, this is the first of many missions it plans and the first with private astronauts staying aboard the NASA segment of the space station. However, by late 2024, the company plans to launch its own spacious module to the station, where its customers will be able to come and go more freely. Before the end of the 2020s, this module and others subsequently launched by Axiom would break off and become an independent, private space station.

All of this is happening with NASA's blessing for myriad reasons. First of all, the agency wants to expand its human exploration horizon to the Moon, and possibly one day to Mars. It would like to leave low Earth orbit in the hands of private spaceflight partners. The International Space Station, too, is aging, with some modules having been in space for nearly a quarter of a century. Some day it will no longer be possible to maintain the station.