Nasa begins months-long effort to focus James Webb space telescope

The revolutionary new scope could provide a glimpse of the cosmos dating back billions of years, but first some painstaking adjustments are needed

Nasa has embarked on the months-long, painstaking process of bringing its newly launched James Webb space telescope into focus, a task due for completion in time for the revolutionary eye in the sky to begin peering into the cosmos by early summer.

Mission control engineers at Nasa's Goddard space flight centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, began by sending their initial commands to tiny motors called actuators that slowly position and fine-tune the telescope's principal mirror.