That Tiny Bright Dot Is the James Webb Telescope, Almost One Million Miles Away From Earth

Back in 2013, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched a deep space observatory called Gaia. Tasked with performing astrometry, it deployed itself one year later at a distance of 1.5 million km (932,000 miles) from Earth, at a location scientists call Lagrange point 2 (L2). For most of the years that have passed since, the spacecraft has been alone out there, until earlier this year it was joined by one of the most expensive and most capa... (continue reading...)