James Webb Information Thread!

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Even knowing there are more than a hundred critical steps ahead for deployment and positioning, I'm relieved it finally flew.

And the Challenger disaster having imprinted on my youth an indelible distrust of large solids (no matter how reliable they have proven since), I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the SRBs separated.

And come to think of it, when the SRBs lighted too. I've seen too many composite motors chuff or simply fail to light since I returned to rocketry. :oops:
 
With the complexity of that thing, they probably didn't need even one more thing to look after. That status tool linked above is where I got my numbers, it's pretty neat.

I just cannot imagine how that array of mirrors will get properly aligned (collimated? Is that the term?) all by itself a million miles out in space. What a piece of work if this comes off well!
 
What they need to do is give us owner’s (taxpayers) access to our other telescope (HST) and position it so we can watch everything that’s going on with our newest telescope (Webb). With 24/7/365 live video feed access.
 
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I just read that due to the precise placement of the Ariane 5 rocket in putting the JWST into its' planned trajectory it will have more onboard propellant than planned for course corrections and station keeping burns. Meaning that the anticipated five year mission could be extended to more than ten years.
Assuming, of course that all the other components keep working.
Excellent start!
 
kuririn said:
I just read that due to the precise placement of the Ariane 5 rocket in putting the JWST into its' planned trajectory it will have more onboard propellant than planned for course corrections and station keeping burns. Meaning that the anticipated five year mission could be extended to more than ten years.
Assuming, of course that all the other components keep working.
Excellent start!
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One thing we've tended to see is that these robotic missions have tended to far outlive their expected end date. I like that, though I realize that us engineers tend to go short on our life estimates and long on our expected completion dates! 😇

You have to love what's been going on with all the Mars rovers, and now the Ingenuity copter. And how about that asteroid sample mission now on it's way back, OSIRIS-Rex? Let's hope Webb continues the chain of successes. It's going less that 1800 mph now. Kind of reminds me of trying to roll a marble at just the right speed/azimuth to stop precisely at the top of a dome. I'm not up on the mechanics of the Lagrange points other than they are some sort of equilibrium point between the Earth's and Sun's gravitational pull. Is the tendency to stay there or to drift? Does the moon make the point tend to wobble even a little? Does Blast it Tom! know how to execute a Google search? :questions:

Edited to add: He does! He can Google! (well, Duck DuckGo, actually...) Here's a nice video that goes in depth on L2 and all the deployments (20 min).
 
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Blast it Tom! said:
I'm not up on the mechanics of the Lagrange points other than they are some sort of equilibrium point between the Earth's and Sun's gravitational pull. Is the tendency to stay there or to drift? Does the moon make the point tend to wobble even a little?
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It's unstable, and without studying the matter in depth, I'd guess the Moon and Jupiter are the largest perturbators of an Sun/Earth L2 orbit. The instability is why the clean insertion by Ariane V is good news, as it leaves JWST more station-keeping fuel, hence likely a longer mission.
 
bad_idea said:
It's unstable, and without studying the matter in depth, I'd guess the Moon and Jupiter are the largest perturbators of an Sun/Earth L2 orbit. The instability is why the clean insertion by Ariane V is good news, as it leaves JWST more station-keeping fuel, hence likely a longer mission.
Click to expand...
I wonder if they included the new "refueling port" that's been studied recently. Seems like a robotic refueling mission would be a realistic possibility within the next ten years.
 
bad_idea said:
It's unstable, and without studying the matter in depth, I'd guess the Moon and Jupiter are the largest perturbators of an Sun/Earth L2 orbit. The instability is why the clean insertion by Ariane V is good news, as it leaves JWST more station-keeping fuel, hence likely a longer mission.
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Yeah, my "marble rolling to the top of a dome" was quite appropriate, except the Webb drivers get to sneak up on it (deliberately) with the mid-course burns. Some amazing astro dynamics going on there!

@Peartree, I hope someone knows, I don't, but refueling the thing would be great, if possible. Such an investment, it'd sure be great to be able to use it even more.
 
Just over 50% of distance traveled so far and Sunshield PORT Mid-Boom deployment completed today, 12-31-2021.
 
And Starboard Mid-Boom is complete today, 1-1-22! Happy New Year from the Webb! Speed down to under 1500 mph (relative to our pretty little orb).

This thing continues to amaze me the more I think about it. 5 sheets of Kapton film, the first .002" thick, the rest .001" thick (.05 and .025 mm, respecively), and as big as a tennis court, stretched to form a sun shield. Yow! Hope the rest of the sun shield deployment continues this well!
 
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Kapton circuit boards are now mature tech,I'veBuilt boards with kapton that were running 2GHz bandwidth and 2350V for a pmt. It was interesting to learn how to make it; it's a lot like ceramics; it shrinks by n amount, so you have to design for it. Interesting stuff.
 
Is there a snafu with our new telescope (Webb), they’re behind on the deployments and now they say TBD 😱
 
TigerHawk said:
Is there a snafu with our new telescope (Webb), they’re behind on the deployments and now they say TBD 😱
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I heard somewhere they were going to take a break before doing the tensioning. The blog also talks about using the flexibility in timelines:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/
"Taking advantage of its flexible commissioning schedule, the Webb team has decided to focus today on optimizing Webb’s power systems while learning more about how the observatory behaves in space. As a result, the Webb mission operations team has moved the beginning of sunshield tensioning activities to no earlier than tomorrow, Monday, Jan. 3. This will ensure Webb is in prime condition to begin the next major deployment step in its unfolding process. "

I'm not aware of any problem. Keeping fingers crossed!
 

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