At 18:17 UTC on January 8, 2022, the joint NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) successfully deployed the starboard wing of its massive 6.5-meter mirror — marking the end of the observatory’s intense and critical deployment sequence.
The feat capped an impressive series of engineering accomplishments, with all major critical deployments that could have ended the mission outright passing without major issue. Final mirror deployment followed the successful unfurling of the massive sunshield — a first-of-its-kind operation that saw Northrop Grumman’s decades of work on the project come to fruition.