If successful it will be EPIC! The most advanced time machine ever...
December 24 launch.
https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/index.html
https://youtu.be/n9MxqFfBTzQ
Hubble orbits 340 miles in altitude... Webb will orbit a million miles out...
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-engineering-challenges
So exciting
It should be... but isn't...
A poor weather forecast at the Guiana Space Center in South America has forced officials to delay the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope by one day to Dec. 25, Christmas morning, mission managers said Tuesday.
The 32-minute launch window Saturday opens at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT). Ground crews at the jungle spaceport in French Guiana planned to transfer the European Ariane 5 rocket with the Webb telescope on top to the ELA-3 launch zone Wednesday.
That rollout, expected to take about two hours, has been delayed to Thursday.
Quote from: BridgeTroll on December 19, 2021, 08:53:32 AM
If successful it will be EPIC! The most advanced time machine ever...
Bill and Ted would like a word...
(https://c.tenor.com/HcOV9MG3pFkAAAAd/bill-and-ted-dude.gif)
https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/12/23/webb-telescope-is-a-time-machine-for-astronomers-to-see-the-cosmic-dawn/
Launch is the easy part...
https://gizmodo.com/here-s-what-could-still-go-wrong-with-the-webb-space-te-1848259511
Successful launch... solar array deployed...
Over the next thirty days a variety of deployments must occur... here is a really good step by step, day by day depiction.
https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/deploymentExplorer.html#5
The previous post contains a link to the deployment schedule... this link displays the current speed and location in reference to earth and L2...
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html
To coin a phrase - fascinating.
Amazing how many steps there are to getting this thing fully operational.
I think ZZ Top explained it best why the James Webb is going to hang out around LaGrange'
Quote
Rumour spreadin' 'round
In that Texas town
About that shack outside La Grange
And you know what I'm talkin' about
Just let me know if you wanna go
To that home out on the range
They got a lot of nice girls
The first of 3 mid course correction burns occurred last night without issue. In the coming days JWST will begin unfolding it's many parts...
Second mid course correction burn completed...
Quote
More Than You Wanted to Know About Webb's Mid-Course Corrections!
On Dec. 25, the Webb team successfully executed the first of three planned orbit corrections to get Webb into its halo orbit around the second Lagrange point, L2. To hear more about these important maneuvers, here is Randy Kimble, the Webb Integration, Test, and Commissioning Project Scientist, at NASA Goddard:
In sending the Webb Observatory into its orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point, the vast majority of the energy required was provided by the Ariane 5 rocket. After release of the observatory from the rocket, several small tweaks to the trajectory are planned, to ease the observatory into its operating orbit about one month after launch.
The largest and most important mid-course correction (MCC), designated MCC-1a, has already been successfully executed as planned, beginning 12.5 hours after launch. This time was chosen because the earlier the course correction is made, the less propellant it requires. This leaves as much remaining fuel as possible for Webb's ordinary operations over its lifetime: station-keeping (small adjustments to keep Webb in its desired orbit) and momentum unloading (to counteract the effects of solar radiation pressure on the huge sunshield).
The burn wasn't scheduled immediately after launch to give time for the flight dynamics team to receive tracking data from three ground stations, widely separated over the surface of the Earth, thus providing high accuracy for their determination of Webb's position and velocity, necessary to determine the precise parameters for the correction burn. Ground stations in Malindi Kenya, Canberra Australia, and Madrid Spain provided the necessary ranging data. There was also time to do a test firing of the required thruster before executing the actual burn. We are currently doing the analysis to determine just how much more correction of Webb's trajectory will be needed, and how much fuel will be left, but we already know that the Ariane 5's placement of Webb was better than requirements.
One interesting aspect of the Webb launch and the Mid-Course Corrections is that we always "aim a little bit low." The L2 point and Webb's loose orbit around it are only semi-stable. In the radial direction (along the Sun-Earth line), there is an equilibrium point where in principle it would take no thrust to remain in position; however, that point is not stable. If Webb drifted a little bit toward Earth, it would continue (in the absence of corrective thrust) to drift ever closer; if it drifted a little bit away from Earth, it would continue to drift farther away. Webb has thrusters only on the warm, Sun-facing side of the observatory. We would not want the hot thrusters to contaminate the cold side of the observatory with unwanted heat or with rocket exhaust that could condense on the cold optics. This means the thrusters can only push Webb away from the Sun, not back toward the Sun (and Earth). We thus design the launch insertion and the MCCs to always keep us on the uphill side of the gravitational potential, we never want to go over the crest – and drift away downhill on the other side, with no ability to come back.
Therefore, the Ariane 5 launch insertion was intentionally designed to leave some velocity in the anti-Sun direction to be provided by the payload. MCC-1a similarly was executed to take out most, but not all, of the total required correction (to be sure that this burn also would not overshoot). In the same way, MCC-1b, scheduled for 2.5 days after launch, and MCC-2, scheduled for about 29 days after launch (but neither time-critical), and the station-keeping burns throughout the mission lifetime will always thrust just enough to leave us a little bit shy of the crest. We want Sisyphus to keep rolling this rock up the gentle slope near the top of the hill – we never want it to roll over the crest and get away from him. The Webb team's job, guided by the Flight Dynamics Facility at NASA Goddard, is to make sure it doesn't.
I have been focused on the spectacular technical aspects of the telescope... here is a great article about some of the engineers who have spent 20+ years on the project... from children being born to leaving home for college...
QuoteMeet the people bringing us answers on the big bang, and their 13,000-pound helper
LOS ANGELES — For some people, it's a memoir or a work of fiction; others, their first company or app. For Scott Willoughby, it's a more than 13,000-pound telescope that must unfold while in space and work in cryogenic temperatures.
"Webb is my middle child," Willoughby said of the James Webb Space Telescope — his baby of 12 years — which launched Christmas Day from Kourou, French Guiana, on South America's northern coast. It is a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has observed distant stars and galaxies for more than 30 years but can't see the first galaxies formed in the universe as Webb will be able to.
Willoughby, the telescope's program manager at aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman Corp., is part of a cadre of thousands of aerospace workers across NASA, Northrop and other firms who have devoted a huge part of their careers — some inadvertently — to this singular mission.
Their work spans nearly two decades, including about a decade of delays, numerous technical challenges and a hurricane that almost derailed a testing round. It culminated with Saturday's launch, which Willoughby likened to seeing his two daughters leave home for college.
"When your kids leave home for that momentous occasion to start that adult life ... you want them to do that and be successful, but you also want to follow them," he said. "But you can't."
"I was only going to be on it for four to five years," said Sandra Irish, NASA's lead structures engineer for Webb. She has now worked on the program for 16 years.
Irish remembers crying as she watched the ship carrying the telescope, which was transported to the launch site in French Guiana from Seal Beach, California, pull into the harbor in October.
"Sometimes we like dull moments," she said, reflecting on her years of work throughout Webb's development and testing — before adding that there weren't any.
The Webb telescope is designed to look for faint infrared light — the first light to streak across the dark universe 13.8 billion years ago — that will allow scientists to understand more about the origins of the universe. It has a mirror nearly three times larger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope and a five-layer sun shield unlike anything ever built before.
"There wasn't anything else out there that I could look at and improve on," said Jim Flynn, director of vehicle engineering for the telescope at Northrop Grumman, who has been on the program for 17 years. The sun shield, made of a film material called Kapton that's covered in a special coating, helps keep the telescope cool.
Much of the work on the telescope was groundbreaking, including the production of 18 hexagonal, lightweight mirrors and ensuring that Webb can function fully at cryogenic temperatures. Over the years, costs ballooned to $10 billion (earlier estimates ranged from $2 billion to $8 billion), and development setbacks delayed the launch date.
"I'm the dinosaur," said Charlie Atkinson, who has the longest tenure on Webb at Northrop Grumman: He started on the program in 1998 and now serves as its chief engineer.
Webb's development lifespan has traced the trajectory of the lives that merged, took new paths and blossomed as its longest-serving creators built it up, year in and year out.
Careers lighted up. Friendships formed. Kids grew up and went to college, and still the telescope was in the making.
Atkinson's twin daughters were born in 2000, while he was working on the proposal for Webb. Co-workers at the time still remember when he'd say, "I gotta go home, it's bath night."
In May, Atkinson's daughters will graduate from college.
"I sometimes tell people it feels like we sprinted a marathon," said Lee Feinberg, optical telescope element manager at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Over the course of his 20 years on the program, Feinberg was in and out of several music groups, including a tribute group called the Allman Others Band.
Like any all-consuming endeavor, work on the Webb came with compromise and sacrifice.
Feinberg would often take his children to school, get on a plane for work, return home around 2 a.m. and then take the kids to school again the next day. "A lot of it was sheer exhaustion," he said.
"It takes a toll on you," said Atkinson, who traveled frequently during his years on the program visiting subcontractors and other NASA facilities in places such as Colorado, Utah, Alabama and Texas. That left his wife with much of the heavy lifting at home.
Irish, who on a recent video call wore a dark blue shirt emblazoned with a white outline of the telescope — one of many in her Webb-branded clothing collection — keeps a photo of her children and now daughter-in-law, posing in front of the telescope, as her desktop image.
The photo was taken just before the telescope was shipped to Johnson Space Center in Houston for more testing, about four years from final transport to the launch site. It was a special moment to share her work with her family, especially after long stretches away from them, including working holidays when the telescope was being prepared and undergoing mechanical testing in 2016 and 2017.
"You have to have dedicated and supportive family," she said. "Otherwise, I don't think you can do it."
For Sarah Willoughby, work on the telescope was special because, unlike many of her previous projects, it wasn't classified, and she could tell her loved ones all about how it was progressing. She and Scott Willoughby married after working together on the project.
"There's a lot of things we work on that you can't share," said Sarah, vice president of overhead persistent infrared and geospatial systems at Northrop Grumman.
The most difficult challenge of her career, she said, was figuring out how to put Webb "on a diet" so it could meet the weight requirements of the Ariane 5 rocket that carried the telescope to space.
As deputy spacecraft manager at the time, she worked with teams spanning all the telescope's sections to whittle away at its mass so it would be ready and able to launch.
Like any aging Californian, Webb saw its share of natural disasters over the course of its development. Irish has a file on her desktop labeled "earthquake data" that chronicles temblors the telescope withstood while parked at Northrop Grumman's Space Park facility in Redondo Beach for final assembly.
By far one of the biggest tests came in 2017, when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston just as the integrated telescope and its instruments were being tested in a chamber at Johnson Space Center that was modified to accommodate testing in cryogenic temperatures.
Once the test started, its super-cold temperatures had to be maintained because it would take too long to warm back up to normal temperatures. So as the rain poured down, the chamber testing had to continue.
Workers with high-clearance vehicles drove to rescue colleagues who were stranded. Others went to the grocery store to get food and water. Air mattresses were brought in for those stuck on site or who had damaged homes.
"It was a very challenging week," Feinberg said. "That's one of the reasons I feel pretty good about how we're going to be able to handle the efforts in front of us. This team has proven resilient over the years."
The moment that approached on Saturday — the finish line, in some ways — feels, for many, bittersweet.
"I don't know what the words are," Rob Pattishall, director of integration and test for the telescope at Northrop Grumman. "Surreal. I see it happening, I know in a couple of weeks, I won't have [the telescope] anymore," he said by telephone call from Kourou earlier this month. "But how can that be possible?"
Pattishall's eldest child was a year old when he first started working on the telescope in 2004. Two weeks ago, she came home from her first semester at college.
He's looking forward to spending the final days of the year with her on Earth, while, far away, Webb embarks on its search for distant light in space.
So far... JWST is unfolding as planned. Forward and aft sunshield pallets deployed.
Step by step deployment here...
https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/deploymentExplorer.html#5
What the hell is Kapton???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapton
(https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/QHMQdP7WSFXPqBssdgcHEV-970-80.gif)
Skywatcher spots James Webb Space Telescope from Earth in telescope photos
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-video-image-virtual-telescope-project
Another crucial deployment completed...
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/
Quote from: BridgeTroll on December 30, 2021, 10:08:59 AM
What the hell is Kapton???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapton
The duct tape of space engineering in the sense that it's the go-to one.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is in good health and will begin tensioning its huge sunshield today, its mission team said today.
In a media teleconference, NASA officials said Webb will begin tightening the tension on the 1st layer of the five-layer sunshield on Webb today after two days of rest and power system optimization.
Two issues occurred over the New Year's Day holiday weekend.
First, Webb's solar arrays were not generating as much power as they could due to their factory settings. At no point was the space telescope in need of power, but NASA rebalanced the arrays so that they can now work at their peak efficiency.
Second, the motors used to tension Webb's sunshield were not staying cool enough as flight controllers preferred. They commanded Webb to change its orientation in space in a way that will keep its motors cooler during the deployment phase.
With both of those fixes in, Webb appears to be doing well in its deployment.
The tensioning process for Webb's sunshield should take at least three days, NASA officials said.
Sunshield successfully deployed... next up... the mirrors...
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/sunshield-successfully-deploys-on-nasa-s-next-flagship-telescope
Amazing.
Go James Webb Go!
Secondary mirror successfully deployed... next up... the two primary mirror segments...
https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/01/05/webbs-secondary-mirror-successfully-deployed/
The mirrors are the heart of the telescope... let's talk mirrors...
This is a great article describing the engineering of this fantastic device...
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/observatory/ote/mirrors/index.html
Size compared to the Hubble...
(https://webb.nasa.gov/images/JWST-HST-primary-mirrors.jpg)
Each segment is adjustable to provide perfect focus...
QuoteAchieving A Single Perfect Focus- Actuators
Once in space, getting these mirrors to focus correctly on faraway galaxies is another challenge. Actuators, or tiny mechanical motors, provide the answer to achieving a single perfect focus. The primary mirror segments and secondary mirror are moved by six actuators that are attached to the back of each mirror piece. The primary mirror segments also have an additional actuator at its center that adjusts its curvature. The telescope's tertiary mirror remains stationary.
^ Bridge, thanks for posting. Just went through the link and its videos. It's amazing what human engineering can accomplish. I note it takes a village to get something at this level done. Just imagine what else we could do to improve our world if people worked more together than against each other! To me, this is one of the most beneficial aspects of space exploration, that we humans are all really one on this spaceship called Earth so we better get along.
A few days ago the JWST looked like this...
(https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/assets/images/deployment/1000pxWide/103.png)
Today it will complete deployment by unfolding the last mirrors...
(https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/assets/images/deployment/1000pxWide/122.png)
This scale model pic helps show the size of this machine... wow...
(https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/James_Webb_model.jpg)
All mirrors are now deployed to operational position and final burn to the L2 orbit Sunday...
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-mirrors-deployed
https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/01/24/webb-reaches-orbital-destination-a-million-miles-from-earth/
QuoteThe James Webb Space Telescope slipped into orbit around a point in space nearly a million miles from Earth Monday where it can capture light from the first stars and galaxies to form in the aftermath of the Big Bang.
As planned, the European Ariane 5 rocket that launched Webb on Christmas Day put the telescope on a trajectory that required only a slight push to reach the intended orbit around Lagrange Point 2, one of five where the pull of sun and Earth interact to form stable or nearly stable gravitational zones.
The push came in the form of a 4-minute 57-second thruster firing at 2 p.m. EST — 30 days after launch at a distance of 907,530 miles from Earth — that increased Webb's velocity by a mere 3.6 mph, just enough to ease it into a six-month orbit around L2.
(https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Webb_s_journey_to_L2_pillars.jpg)
Great explanation and demonstration of the process of focusing the 18 mirrors to form a single image...
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/02/03/photons-incoming-webb-team-begins-aligning-the-telescope/
Engineers pleased with Webb's progress as mirror alignment gets underway...
https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/02/11/engineers-pleased-with-webbs-progress-as-mirror-alignment-gets-underway/
First picture...
(https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/alignment_mosaic_compressed-2048x1388-1.jpg)
Amazing.
Thanks for the share.
Making progress focusing on a single star... pretty cool gif...
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/02/25/webb-mirror-alignment-continues-successfully/
(https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/wp-content/uploads/sites/326/2022/02/SegmentAlignment.gif)
QuoteMar 16, 2022
NASA's Webb Reaches Alignment Milestone, Optics Working Successfully
Following the completion of critical mirror alignment steps, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope team expects that Webb's optical performance will be able to meet or exceed the science goals the observatory was built to achieve.
On March 11, the Webb team completed the stage of alignment known as "fine phasing." At this key stage in the commissioning of Webb's Optical Telescope Element, every optical parameter that has been checked and tested is performing at, or above, expectations. The team also found no critical issues and no measurable contamination or blockages to Webb's optical path. The observatory is able to successfully gather light from distant objects and deliver it to its instruments without issue.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-webb-reaches-alignment-milestone-optics-working-successfully
Webb is getting closer to commissioning... and exceeding expectations...
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/04/28/nasas-webb-in-full-focus-ready-for-instrument-commissioning/
(https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/wp-content/uploads/sites/326/2022/04/webb_img_sharpness_details_v2.png)
QuoteEngineering images of sharply focused stars in the field of view of each instrument demonstrate that the telescope is fully aligned and in focus. For this test, Webb pointed at part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, providing a dense field of hundreds of thousands of stars across all the observatory's sensors. The sizes and positions of the images shown here depict the relative arrangement of each of Webb's instruments in the telescope's focal plane, each pointing at a slightly offset part of the sky relative to one another. Webb's three imaging instruments are NIRCam (images shown here at a wavelength of 2 microns), NIRISS (image shown here at 1.5 microns), and MIRI (shown at 7.7 microns, a longer wavelength revealing emission from interstellar clouds as well as starlight). NIRSpec is a spectrograph rather than imager but can take images, such as the 1.1 micron image shown here, for calibrations and target acquisition. The dark regions visible in parts of the NIRSpec data are due to structures of its microshutter array, which has several hundred thousand controllable shutters that can be opened or shut to select which light is sent into the spectrograph. Lastly, Webb's Fine Guidance Sensor tracks guide stars to point the observatory accurately and precisely; its two sensors are not generally used for scientific imaging but can take calibration images such as those shown here. This image data is used not just to assess image sharpness but also to precisely measure and calibrate subtle image distortions and alignments between sensors as part of Webb's overall instrument calibration process. Credit: NASA/STScI
Webb is ready for action! First pick at 5:30 pm...
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/07/11/nasas-webb-telescope-is-now-fully-ready-for-science/
(https://www.popsci.com/uploads/2022/07/11/james-webb-space-telescope-galaxies-deepest-image.jpg?auto=webp&width=1440&height=1118.88)
Just amazing!
Quote from: jcjohnpaint on July 12, 2022, 10:10:39 AM
Just amazing!
You are looking back in time over 4 BILLION years...
More pix with explanations...
https://www.popsci.com/science/james-webb-telescope-first-results/
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-reveals-cosmic-cliffs-glittering-landscape-of-star-birth
JWST took a damaging micro meteorite hit to mirror...
https://www.universetoday.com/156793/you-can-see-where-jwst-took-a-direct-hit-from-a-micrometeorite-on-one-of-its-mirrors/#more-156793
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/unexpected-james-webb/
Wow!
JWST is already questioning classic Big Bang theories...
https://www.universetoday.com/157264/the-latest-webb-observations-dont-disprove-the-big-bang-but-they-are-interesting/#more-157264
(https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/webb.jpg)