344 steps stood between the James Webb Space Telescope and total failure — any one could have ended it — and the telescope that survived them all now runs on less power than a household kettle, a million miles from Earth

344 steps stood between the James Webb Space Telescope and total failure — any one could have ended it — and the telescope that survived them all now runs on less power than a household kettle, a million miles from Earth

When the James Webb Space Telescope launched on 25 December 2021, it carried a list of 344 single points of failure. Each one was a step or a part where a single fault would have crippled the mission, with no second chance and no way to send anyone to fix it. The telescope cleared all of them. It now sits about a million miles from Earth, doing the most sensitive infrared astronomy ever attempted, on roughly the power of a household kettle. Both…