The James Webb Space Telescope's road ahead

What's happening: This week, engineers "tensioned" the JWST's tennis court-sized sun shield that will keep the telescope's instruments cold, allowing it to more easily see out into the universe in infrared light.

• The first three layers of the five-layer sun shield deployed Monday, with the final two successfully tensioned on Tuesday.
• "This is a really big moment," JWST project manager Bill Ochs said after the sun shield was fully tensioned.
• Now that all five layers of the sun shield are through tensioning, the telescope is about 70%–75% of the way through the 344 single points of failure that could spell major trouble for the telescope.

What's next: The JWST's next big event is the deployment of its secondary mirror used to reflect light back to its large gold-coated primary mirror.

• That deployment should happen later this week.
• If all goes according to plan with its commissioning and deployments, the JWST should start science operations toward the middle of the year.