A large part of the wait is for the telescope to cool down, many of the instruments are likely to not function at all until they reach extremely cold temperatur

A large part of the wait is for the telescope to cool down, many of the instruments are likely to not function at all until they reach extremely cold temperatures. The other issue is that the complexity of the instruments means that without rigorous calibration any data gathered is likely to be completely useless noise. The calibration isn't as simple as turning a blurry image into a clear one. Here's a whole list of calibration challenges that needs to be overcome: https://www.stsci.edu/~INS/2010CalWorkshop/mather.pdf https://www.stsci.edu/~INS/2010CalWorkshop/mather.pdf