NASA’s James Webb telescope opened its golden wings for the last time ever on Earth

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is over a decade late at this point (you can thank Northrop Grumman's incompetence for that), but when it comes to high-powered scientific instruments, late is definitely better than never. Progress has been excruciatingly slow, especially after the coronavirus pandemic sidelined many NASA projects last year, but the state-of-the-art space telescope is finally hitting the milestones it should have hit many years ago. The latest hurdle the telescope passed was the testing of all of its movable parts, including the massive golden mirrors that will give the telescope the power to peer deep into space.

In a new blog post, NASA celebrates the milestone with some new images and a few optimistic quotes from NASA scientists and engineers. It's definitely something worth celebrating, even if it's embarrassingly late, but the real test for the telescope won't come until after it rides a rocket into the sky.