Nasa’s new James Webb Space Telescope has seen its first major breakthrough, with the agency announcing it will last “significantly” longer than previously expected.

The prevision of the launch last week, and its flight since, mean that it will have enough fuel to “allow support of science operations for significantly more than a 10-year science lifetime”, Nasa said. The minimum timeline for the mission is five years.

The science work of the space telescope is powered in part by solar panels, which Nasa recently said had been deployed successfully. But it also relies on more traditional propellant to allow it to orient itself in space.

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Nasa said that the telescope has enough rocket propellant not only for getting to its eventual destination – a point in space known as L2 – but also the various things that will be required of it for a long time. That propellant is used through the life of the mission for what Nasa calls “station keeping” manoeuvres, as it adjusts its orbit, and for other burns that keep Webb the right way up in space.

Read more: The Independent