Awesome Adam, yes and thank you! This is one major project and I think it is almost impossible to imagine the scale of complexity and accuracy that is involved.
Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, which resides in low Earth orbit, the JWST will actually spend its life orbiting the Sun (as noted earlier, roughly 1 million miles from Earth). Dubbed the second Lagrange point (or L2), this special orbit path for the telescope allows it to stay in line with Earth as it moves around the Sun. This movement allows JWST’s massive sun shield the opportunity to protect it from the heat and light of the Sun, Earth, and Moon. Its shield is important since the JWST will primarily observe infrared signals from objects very far away, readings that are easily disrupted by other bright, hot sources (i.e. the Sun, Earth, and Moon)
