NASA fully deploys new space telescope

The giant "golden eye" opened up flawlessly over the course of two weeks. It's now 600,000 miles away.

January 8, 2022 - 6:40 PM

NASA James Webb Space Telescope Project Manager Bill Ochs, left, NASA James Webb Space Telescope Commissioning Manager John Durning, right, and others from the operations team celebrate after confirming that the observatory's final primary mirror wing successfully extended and locked into place at the Space Telescope Science Institute on Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022, in Baltimore. (Bill Ingalls/NASA/Getty Images/TNS)

NASA opened a golden eye on the cosmos Saturday.

The James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most complex of its kind, successfully completed its final deployment stage by opening its 21-foot gold-coated, flower-shaped mirror.

“Today, NASA achieved another engineering milestone decades in the making,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.

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