The orbit needs to be actively maintained. The telescope was designed for a 5.5 year mission, but NASA says it could last up to 10.5 years with proper fuel mana

The orbit needs to be actively maintained. The telescope was designed for a 5.5 year mission, but NASA says it could last up to 10.5 years with proper fuel management. It has two different types of thrusters under the "Propulsion Subsystem". > One kind is called "Secondary Combustion Augmented Thrusters" (SCAT), and they are used for orbit correction (like applied changes in velocity for each maneuver the spacecraft makes and also for orbit station-keeping). The SCATs are bi-propellant thrusters, using hydrazine (N2H4) and dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) as fuel and oxidizer, respectively. > The other kind of thruster on Webb is called a MRE-1, or mono-propellant rocket engine, since it only uses hydrazine. There are eight MRE-1s on Webb, and they are used for attitude control and momentum unloading of the reaction wheels Ref: https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-observatory-hardware/jwst-spacecraft-bus/jwst-propulsion https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-observatory-hardware/jwst-s...