The James Webb Space Telescope, launched a month ago, has reached its destination, a million miles away from earth. That is a marvel of engineering and planning, even before it has taken its first look into the farthest reaches of the universe.

Just think of what NASA’s engineers have done so far. They have designed and built a space telescope that had to be folded up for launch, then carefully had to unfold its protective sun shield over several days, then unfold and lock into place the gold-covered mirrors that will collect more light than the Hubble space telescope. With that accomplished — and if anything failed there was no going out to fix it — the telescope traveled to its destination and on command, from a million miles back on earth, fired its retro rockets precisely to drop into orbit around the sun.

There are still several months of alignment and preparations before it is ready to start taking pictures in June, but the fact that it is out there, ready to go, is incredible.

At a cost of $10 billion, NASA took a big gamble on the James Webb Space Telescope. One little flaw or mishap and there would be a $10 billion piece of space junk out there.

But NASA has a great deal of experience in sweating the details.

As we said earlier, we cannot wait to see the kind of images the James Webb will provide, and the kind of knowledge those images will provide in expanding our understanding of the universe.