The components are currently being inspected for damage

Dec 18, 2013 15:17 GMT  ·  By
Last three primary mirror segments for the JWST arrive at GSFC on December 16, 2013
   Last three primary mirror segments for the JWST arrive at GSFC on December 16, 2013

Officials with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in Greenbelt, Maryland, announce that the last three mirror segments that will go on the space agency's James Webb Space Telescope have been delivered to the facility, and are currently undergoing inspection. 

JWST boasts 18 hexagonal primary mirror segments, which will make their way to space in a folded configuration, to be unfurled when the observatory is inserted into the L2 Lagrangian orbital point.

The last batch of perfectly flat beryllium mirrors arrived at Goddard on Monday, December 16, after moving across the entire country from primary optics contractor Ball Aerospace. When opened, the telescope's main eye will be 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter, and boast a collecting area of 25 square meters (270 square feet).

The major contractors on the JWST are Northrop Grumman and Ball Aerospace. NASA plans to launch JWST aboard an Ariane V heavy-lift delivery system in October 2018, for a 5-year mission at a location some 1.5 million kilometers (932,056 miles) away from Earth.