Before the James Webb Space Telescope can start observing the universe, all 18 segments of its primary mirror need to act as one 6.5-meter mirror. But the alignment of the mirror segments is “not just right now, it’s a continuous process, just to make sure that they’re always perfectly aligned,” Scarlin Hernandez, a flight systems engineer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said at a NASA Science Live event on January 24. The James Webb Space Telescope’s science instruments are stored behind the primary mirror (as shown in this animation).