NASA's James Webb Space Telescope successfully positioned to look back in time

The deep-infrared sensors on Webb therefore aim to do what no other telescope ever made can do and capture that light for the first time.The first images from Webb are expected in late April at the earliest (though late May is more likely), after Webb's sensors have had sufficient time to cool down to -369.4 degrees Fahrenheit/-223 degrees Celsius–which is the temperature cold enough to capture some of the faintest infrared light possible without having to worry about interference from the heat of the Sun or even Webb's own instruments–and its 18 primary mirror segments have been aligned to within 10s of nanometers.For now though, NASA and all of the various engineers from around the world, both government and private contractors, are celebrating what is unquestionably one of the greatest engineering achievements of all time.To say that this is a big deal for astronomers is a gross understatement.Webb is the most advanced telescope ever deployed, and its sophistication means that it is also incredibly complex as far as space telescopes go. Wells and the L3Harris engineers have done extensive testing so that there won't be any surprises the way there were with Hubble's deployment, including a full system test from end to end to make sure that the optical systems work exactly as they should."All of us have a high degree of confidence that the optical system is going to work well," Wells told TechRadar as Webb completed its historic deployment.