Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?

[littleman]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

[rcjordan]

Apprehensive, yes.  Could be an $8.8 Billion fireworks show.

[ergophobe]

I'm curious to see what comes back from it. I wouldn't say "excited" since I think it will be quite a while until we see what it can do.

Remember how Hubble seemed like a debacle for a while... and then it started offering data that simply had never been available before? So the "excitement" curve was excited > disappointed > awed. If Webb can achieve that, it will be great :-)

[rcjordan]

Welp, so far, so good.

[Rupert]

Keep us posted please... yes interested.

[rcjordan]

When the telescope was about 100,000 miles (160,000 km) away from Earth, the observatory executed a crucial burn to ensure it would safely reach its destination.

According to NASA, this burn, dubbed Mid-Course Correction Burn 1a or MCC1a, was the most important of the three burns the spacecraft will make during its journey to the destination --Earth-sun Lagrange point 2-- and the only one that needed to be particularly carefully timed.

[rcjordan]

+

Worth a read.  We have 6 months of high anxiety to bear.

James Webb Space Telescope to Unfold After Launch — a NASA Nail-Biter
https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-to-unfold-after-launch-2021-12

[ergophobe]

Nice animations. I was listening to radio coverage of this last night while driving around.

One thing to highlight is that the JW is going into orbit around the sun 1.5 million km away from the earth. I found this interesting, especially the comparison to other objects (Hubble, the moon, etc)
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html

[Brad]

Hats off to the European Space Agency for their Ariane 5 rocket which worked flawlessly.  It's good to know that somebody besides the US, Russia and China have heavy lift capability.

[rcjordan]

Dec 28:
JWST will deploy its mirror flaps around 12 to 13 days after launch. But before that happens, the observatory has an even more complex deployment that it must get through, one that will take up to six days to complete. It's the deployment of JWST's sunshield, an intricate apparatus designed to block heat from the Sun and keep the telescope extra cool while in space. While the deployment process is designed to be flexible and things could change, the first step of the sunshield deployment is supposed to get started today, which means almost everyone associated with this mission will be holding their breath for the next week.

"The sunshield itself is — of all of our deployments — that's the one that is the most complex," Lee Feinberg, the optical telescope element manager for JWST at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, tells The Verge. "It has the most moving parts."

---------

>European Space Agency

The Ariane 5 rocket has one of the widest payload fairings currently on the market, spanning 5.4 meters, or nearly 18 feet wide. But that's still too small to house JWST's mirror fully extended.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/28/22816310/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-jwst-deployment-sequence

[rcjordan]

+

Baby steps...

On Tuesday (Dec. 28), the spacecraft notched another key step in that deployment as it unfolded the Forward Unitized Pallet Structure (UPS) of its vast sunshield, according to a NASA statement. The process took four hours and concluded at 1:21 p.m. EST (1821 GMT), according to the agency. Webb will now mimic that process with the Aft UPS.

[rcjordan]

Aft Sunshield Pallet Deployed

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2021/12/28/aft-sunshield-pallet-deployed/

[rcjordan]

5-layer heat shield deployed.

[rcjordan]

Sunshield Tensioning Complete. JWST Sunshield is Fully Deployed

[rcjordan]

Secondary Mirror FULLY DEPLOYED