NASA Webb Telescope Undergoes Final Tests (sciencemag.org) 47
NASA engineers are getting one last look at the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a final test to show that its 18 gold-tinted mirror segments can unfold into a precise honeycomb configuration. From a report: After the test concludes this week, the giant instrument will be folded up, packed into a shipping container, and shipped off to French Guiana, where it will launch into space on 31 October. The 6.5-meter-wide JWST is the agency's next great observatory, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.
In a NASA briefing this week, Program Scientist Eric Smith told reporters it was born out of a realization in the mid-1990s that, no matter how long it stared into deep space, Hubble would never be able to see the universe's very first stars and galaxies and learn how they formed and evolved. The expanding universe has "redshifted" the light of those primordial objects out of the visible spectrum; NASA needed a space telescope that worked in the infrared. "So the idea of Webb was born," Smith says. Since then, astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets. Smith says JWST will be able to probe their atmospheres for molecules such as carbon dioxide, water, methane, and others that could suggest the presence of life.
Getting the $9 billion contraption to the point of departure has taken NASA much more time and money than it or Congress ever suspected. The construction of JWST proved to be the most complex and difficult science project in the agency's history. The process of testing the telescope's folding mirror, multilayered sunshield, and cryogenically cooled instruments has stretched years longer than planned. But come late August, all that will be over as JWST, in a protective cocoon, will be taken from Northrop Grumman's facility in Redondo Beach, California, and put onto a ship. The telescope will sail through the Panama Canal to Europe's spaceport near Kourou. Unlike the 2.4-meter-wide Hubble, which fit comfortably inside the bay of the Space Shuttle, JWST's mirror is much larger than the fairing on top of an Ariane 5 rocket, so it is elaborately folded to fit inside it.
In a NASA briefing this week, Program Scientist Eric Smith told reporters it was born out of a realization in the mid-1990s that, no matter how long it stared into deep space, Hubble would never be able to see the universe's very first stars and galaxies and learn how they formed and evolved. The expanding universe has "redshifted" the light of those primordial objects out of the visible spectrum; NASA needed a space telescope that worked in the infrared. "So the idea of Webb was born," Smith says. Since then, astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets. Smith says JWST will be able to probe their atmospheres for molecules such as carbon dioxide, water, methane, and others that could suggest the presence of life.
Getting the $9 billion contraption to the point of departure has taken NASA much more time and money than it or Congress ever suspected. The construction of JWST proved to be the most complex and difficult science project in the agency's history. The process of testing the telescope's folding mirror, multilayered sunshield, and cryogenically cooled instruments has stretched years longer than planned. But come late August, all that will be over as JWST, in a protective cocoon, will be taken from Northrop Grumman's facility in Redondo Beach, California, and put onto a ship. The telescope will sail through the Panama Canal to Europe's spaceport near Kourou. Unlike the 2.4-meter-wide Hubble, which fit comfortably inside the bay of the Space Shuttle, JWST's mirror is much larger than the fairing on top of an Ariane 5 rocket, so it is elaborately folded to fit inside it.
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Remember when Scientific American ran provocative articles about science? Now it's a house organ for the Red Guards.
Re: James Webb (Score:5, Insightful)
I fully support gay rights, but to judge people of yesterday by the more informed and enlightened values of today is wrong. Who knows, in 100 years anyone who ever ate meat may be seen as evil. Obama and Martin Luther King may get cancelled because they ate meat and did not care enough about the suffering of animals. People should not be blamed for the ignorance of their time.
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He has been accused of sexual misconduct.
Who hasn't.
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He has been accused of sexual misconduct.
Who hasn't.
For a long time women with jobs were not thought to be respectable because sexual abuse from the higher ups was pretty much a given.
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Re: James Webb (Score:3)
Re: James Webb (Score:5, Funny)
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Personally I am annoyed that this groundbreaking device is named after a bureaucrat rather than a scientist.
Because the scientists we might have named it after have by now mostly been canceled. Just to spite the SJWs, my inclination would have been to name it after Richard Feynman.
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Best of luck, they're gonna need it (Score:3)
Hoping this all works out after this things been in development for so long and with such a troubled buildout. It has to launch, get to the L2 Lagrange point, unfold it's shield and it's mirrors and cryogenically cool itself and it's mirrors with no hope of repair if it doesn't go perfectly.
Really makes me think of the John Glenn quote “My life depended on 150,000 pieces of equipment – each bought from the lowest bidder." (One of the many variations I have heard)
In a decade I can see Starship getting a contract as being maybe the only vehicle with the capability to get out there repair it (I don't think the Orion capsule could do it? Maybe?)
Re:Best of luck, they're gonna need it (Score:4, Funny)
Hoping this all works out after this things been in development for so long and with such a troubled buildout. It has to launch, get to the L2 Lagrange point, unfold it's shield and it's mirrors and cryogenically cool itself and it's mirrors with no hope of repair if it doesn't go perfectly.
Really makes me think of the John Glenn quote “My life depended on 150,000 pieces of equipment – each bought from the lowest bidder." (One of the many variations I have heard)
In a decade I can see Starship getting a contract as being maybe the only vehicle with the capability to get out there repair it (I don't think the Orion capsule could do it? Maybe?)
I don't anything on JWST went to the lowest bidder.
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Just the grammer chekker :-)
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I've said for years the odds of this system working aren't good; the deployment process is fabulously complex and involves materials and geometries that are prone to fail. If they pull it off the best that can be said is if you spend multiple billions more than you proposed in the first place you can succeed a decade late.
Re:Best of luck, they're gonna need it (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah a kind of irony being that the whole complicated folding operation which has caused so much trouble was to cram the thing into an Ariane 5 fairing and in another few years SpaceX could have Starship operating with a diameter almost double in size (9m vs 5.4m) which would have made the entire development that much more straightforward. If this thing had launched in 2009 like it was supposed to we could've been on development of a second generation version by now.
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They should include a little helper bot that can poke and prod at parts that stick. But doing such would probably require adding special hooks to the probe itself so that the helper bot can remain still while pushing or pulling. Otherwise it will fling off into space.
I realize such isn't cheap, but if saves a $10b mission it would be worth every penny.
The Galileo
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But it never was released, and humanity ended.
Final tests? (Score:2)
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Final test? Check!
Final reviews? Pending...
Final routine maintenance? Pending...
Final reverse lens? Pending...
Final systems check? Pending...
Final launch prep? Pending...
Final countdown? Pending...
Why not launch with Falcon Heavy? (Score:2)
Was SpaceX not able to handle this?
Re:Why not launch with Falcon Heavy? (Score:4, Informative)
The Falcon Heavy faring is not wide enough to support JWST. Also, when this was contracted many moons ago, FH was just a paper rocket. Lastly, the launch services on Ariane V are part of the ESA's contribution to the project.
Re:Why not launch with Falcon Heavy? (Score:5, Informative)
Design started way back in 1996 and development in 2003, so SpaceX was barely a thing in those times and the whole folding operation was designed around the Ariane 5 fairing volume.
Also Falcon Heavy's fairing (13m x 5.2m) is actually a bit smaller than Ariane 5 (17m x 5.4m) so not really an upgrade in that sense. One of Falcon Heavy's reasons for infrequent flight is the fairing is a bit small for it's power output.
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Sigh. Yes this is a super complex piece of scientific equipment, with exacting specifications, placed in a distant spot in space. ...but, the idea that SpaceX has gone from nothing in 2003, to first Falcon launch in 2008, to reusing rockets, re-landing (multiple) rockets, Starship, regular manned missions, Starlink in the same interval of time that Webb has spent...Sigh again.
French Guiana? (Score:1)
Who's idea was it to send a $9 billion telescope to French Guiana? They couldn't trust NASA or SpaceX to launch it?
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Arianespace has a pretty decent heavy launch record, Korou has advantages related to being closer to the equator, and SpaceX was operating out of Elon's garage when this was proposed and contracted.
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Oh no! (Score:2)
After the test concludes this week, the giant instrument will be folded up, packed into a shipping container, and shipped off to French Guiana, where it will launch into space on 31 October.
This is problematic. At they go through with this plan then NASA is going to have to rename the James Webb Paperweight something different! Since the original name was lost to history, I suggest we call it the James Webb Spaceweight! ;)
Save some money? (Score:2)
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This launch has been planned for over a decade now and NASA is not really "paying" for the launch, the ESA is doing it as part of their 300m euro contribution for the project.
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Re: Save some money? (Score:2)
It's easy to think this is a new space telescope with how long we've been hearing about it but nope same one that's been launching every year for 10 years.
Rename it, NASA! (Score:2)
As that's what shuttle was made for... (Score:1)