James Webb Space Telescope

It’s cooler. :wink:

Edit to add, there was no video in your post when I first looked at it. Must’ve been my phone.

They tried to cancel James Webb. They tried… and cried.

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I want to see the acceleration vector. I looked for an animation but couldn’t find it. I guess I could find a piece of paper and a pencil though.

:rocket:

Have you seen this? I haven’t studied that kind of mathematics, but the word acceleration appears 47 times in this paper LOL.

Just about halfway there. Sunshield still opening.

The James Webb Space Telescope successfully completed the deployment of its 70-foot (21-meter) sunshield on Tuesday. :wink:

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All looking great so far. Launch was super nominal meaning more fuel to extend the life of the mission, now saying it will be significantly longer then ten years, previous estimates were five to ten.

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Primary mirror wings being deployed.

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“The mission crew still has to align the telescope’s optics by moving the primary mirror’s segments … a months-long process.”

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As I understand it, the JWST should look more like this while in use.

I am in awe of the mechanical engineers who figured out how to fold that up into a compact package to fit atop the rocket, and then successfully got it to unfold again in deep space without anyone there to bang on it if things got stuck.

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They sent out a robotic rubber mallet with it just in case

It’s an older tech sir, but it checks out. :wink:

giphy

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I was literally just thinking that would be an important feature in future mechanically complex systems.

Galileo could have used one of those. The only space vehicle I actually saw up close at JPL, I was chagrined that the high gain antenna didn’t fully deploy. Kudos to the other engineers who just used the resultant low data rate.

https://llis.nasa.gov/lesson/492

The Webb team did have the ability to pulse the maneuvering jets to shock the satellite a bit if things got stuck during deployment, but that would have depleted valuable fuel and shortened the mission.

Last command to put Webb into orbit around L2 to be given on Monday.

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