and it has to be held on to a series of pins which release one by one, pull it out, make it tight, release another bit, pull it out again, until slowly over days, you pull out this tennis court—sized object. for many people working on the project, that is where the real nerves are. the sun shield protects the telescope from the heat and light of the sun. the difference between the hot and cold sides is huge. the telescope needs to operate in the coldest and darkest conditions to see the most distant stars. for the first time, we can see all the way back to the time of the first galaxies forming, and that will allow us to get images of them and verify that they are the first galaxies and then we can study how galaxies have evolved over the history of the universe. the images that eventually come back from james webb will be more spectacular than these taken by the hubble telescope, but there is still work to do. the sun shield will take several days to open and that is just the start of this