Where is NASA's James Webb Space Telescope? Here's how to follow its progress.

What is the current status of the big observatory? This is how you can find out.

A still image from a video showing the deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)

NASA's proposed $10 billion observatory is nearing the end of a tense series of stages that will determine its ultimate configuration and placement.

The "29 days on the edge," as NASA has nicknamed the lengthy and intricate deployment process for the James Webb Space Telescope, began when the spacecraft launched on Saturday (Dec. 25). The observatory has made significant progress since then, including unfurling its solar array and modifying its trajectory. Steps like opening the sunshield and adjusting the mirrors are still to come.

The observatory's progress can be followed on the NASA website dedicated to themission. The spacecraft's location and speed are detailed on the webpage.

Webb has already travelled more than one-third of the distance to its ultimate orbit, circling a location known as L2, or the Earth-sun Lagrange point 2, after only a few days on the road. The gravitational tugs of the sun and Earth are balanced here, approximately 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometres) away from Earth on the opposite side of the solar, creating a comparatively stable environment for spacecraft.

The dashboard will display temperatures for both the hot side of the spacecraft, which faces the sun, and the cold side, which will be shielded by the enormous sunshield, after Webb's temperature sensors are deployed.

The main dashboard also includes information from NASA's primary deployment timeline concerning the most recent deployment stage Webb has completed.

The telescope will be fully deployed 13 days after launch, around Jan. 7, and will reach its ultimate orbit 29.5 days after launch if everything goes according to plan. Following that, the observatory will be commissioned for five months in order to prepare its equipment and mirror for science activity, which is planned to begin in the summer of 2022.