By and large, the telescope responded and everything deployed as hoped. A sunshade was deployed to keep the telescope and its sensors from overheating.Įvery step had test and validation requirements. Soon after launch, a huge solar array had to be deployed. Once launched, there were multiple points along the journey where the risk of failure was high. NASA launched the Webb telescope into space and sent it on a nearly 1-million-mile journey to the sun. But that does not diminish the achievement. Yes, the project had numerous delays and cost overruns since development began in 1996. There is a lot of first-time science and engineering at work on Webb telescope, but it also is an incredible achievement of planning and project management. Its ability to target distant objects is higher. Because of its orbit around the sun, it is out of the shadow of the earth and moon. The Webb telescope is expected to render unprecedented images and data on distant galaxies and planets. In 1993, a crew flying on Space Shuttle Endeavour retrieved Hubble and corrected issues with its mirrors before that telescope could start to capture groundbreaking imagery. The complex maneuvers were made even higher risk because any mistake would not be correctable as was the case with Hubble telescope. JWST accomplished several firsts, particularly the way it unfolded its heat shield and mirror and sensor arrays. Also click here to see the industry coalition NASA assembled for the program, which saw Northrop Grumman be the lead industrial contractor. This article from The Conversation has an excellent breakdown of the telescope. The process of telescope alignment will take approximately three months.In a few weeks, NASA will release the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope - a nearly $10 billion project collect data and images from deep in space while in orbit around the sun. “Next up in the wavefront process, we will be moving mirrors in the micron and nanometer ranges to reach the final optical positions for an aligned telescope. Even against beryllium’s bending stiffness per weight, which is six times greater than that of ordinary steel, these ROC actuators individually shape the curvature of each mirror segment to set the initial parabolic shape of the primary mirror. The 18 radius of curvature (ROC) actuators were moved from their launch position as well. Using six motors that deploy each segment approximately half the length of a paper clip, these actuators clear the mirrors from their launch restraints and give each segment enough space to later be adjusted in other directions to the optical starting position for the upcoming wavefront alignment process. The primary mirror segments were driven 12.5 millimeters away from the telescope structure. The mirror deployment team incrementally moved all 132 actuators located on the back of the primary mirror segments and secondary mirror. As part of this effort, the motors made over a million revolutions this week, controlled through 20 cryogenic electronics boxes on the telescope. “Today, the James Webb Space Telescope team completed the mirror segment deployments. Today, we hear from Erin Wolf, Webb program manager at Ball Aerospace, about the completion of that process:
Last week, the Webb team began moving the observatory’s individual mirror segments out of their launch positions. Editor’s Note: This post was updated to clarify the strength vs.
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