The James Webb telescope does not orbit Earth: it circles the Sun–Earth L2 point 1.5 million kilometres away, keeping its mirror permanently shielded from the Sun—and unlike Hubble, it was never designed for astronauts to repair.
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The James Webb Space Telescope is often described as a successor to Hubble, but the two observatories occupy very different places. Hubble circles Earth a few hundred kilometers above the surface. Webb travels around the Sun with Earth, operating near the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, about 1.5 million kilometers away.
That distance is almost four times the average distance between Earth and the Moon. It gave Webb the cold, stable environment needed for infrared astronomy, but it also
That distance is almost four times the average distance between Earth and the Moon. It gave Webb the cold, stable environment needed for infrared astronomy, but it also
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