Two orders of magnitude (100X) more powerful than Hubble.
Thunder is possible during the launch time so this may get postponed.
Long shot (pun intended) but are there any GRM's around Kourou, French Guiana???
Two orders of magnitude (100X) more powerful than Hubble.
Thunder is possible during the launch time so this may get postponed.
Long shot (pun intended) but are there any GRM's around Kourou, French Guiana???
Bummed it's not launching from KSC but excited to see how the mission goes.
I'm pretty eager for images to start coming in. I remember being pretty little in the early nineties when my grandpa got internet and a fancy color printer and it took what seemed like forever to print full color images from Hubble.
One of my Formula SAE teammates had a role in designing certain elements of that.
I saw on tv during dinner earlier tonight that the launch got postponed due to high winds 
.
No delay, t-15 minutes!
Merry Christmas
Watching live feed from Peru, flawless launch at 20 minutes.
Separated, solar array out and powered up! Pretty neat to actually get to see that as it heads off into space.
Successful separation from the final stage, the solar array has been deployed and is providing power. Everything is flawless up to now.
Final orbit will be a million miles from earth, far beyond the moon.
Pretty cool to see the last view of the scope as it leaves observable stuff.
Kind of surprised to see the solar array come out before they said anything.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:One of my Formula SAE teammates had a role in designing certain elements of that.
To piggyback on this and humble brag - they're using my tiny family company's software to capture images.
In reply to clutchsmoke :
COOL
For those of you who want to keep track of Webb- a current status page- https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html and since that page does not include the actual status of the deployments- NASA has a blog that announces when they are done- https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/
So until it's at L2, I'll be keeping both pages open all of the time.
clutchsmoke said:AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:One of my Formula SAE teammates had a role in designing certain elements of that.
To piggyback on this and humble brag - they're using my tiny family company's software to capture images.
I had the pleasure of getting to do a few things on this project as well. A close friend of mine also had his hands on this project a few years back. Needless to say we were both very stoked to see it finally take orbit. My bet was 2030 so I lost.
Looks like the sun shield deployed properly. That was a concern. It is quite complicated and a failure in a test deployment caused a pretty good delay of the launch. The sun shield is important to be able to do good infrared observation (heat radiates IR).
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html
Now, they just have to get the mirror deployed, which of course is also pretty complex, but not nearly as fragile. Looks to about a 1/4 the way to L2. They are planning on undershooting the insertion a bit since the configuration of the craft only allowed it to correct in one direction, so an overshoot in unrecoverable.
14 days into this mission, and everything is deployed. Earlier in the week, the tripod secondary mirror deployed, and over the last two days, the main mirror wings deployed- with the starboard side finishing earlier today.
Radiators are fully deployed, so the cold side is slowly getting to -200C.
All that's left on the way to L2 is to aim the mirrors.
News during the week also gave clarification on the fuel savings- that the original lifespan has been at least doubled from 5 to 10 years. And they seem pretty confident that it will clear 10 years. Should be a pretty interesting next decade - actually probably closer to the next few decades to analyze all of the data- for astrophysicists.
They're starting to focus/aim the primary mirror segments. Supposedly starting to take images in may and should be publicly visible a month later.
In reply to barefootskater5000 :
The amusing thing about that are the live streams on the University of Tubes that is covering that. As if they can even show that via the model. The movements of the mirrors are really tiny.
But the excitement of seeing what you suggest, yea- I'm right there, too!
In reply to alfadriver :
The livestreams are pretty useless. Oddly, knowing that this thing is 100x more better than Hubble and will be able to see some of the really old/far stuff, I'm more excited to see what it can do with our local scenery. Will we be able to get more detail of our solar system? They just released recent Hubble shots of all the planets, but imagine 100x more resolution/magnification. Im excited for Saturn and the moons of Jupiter.
barefootskater5000 said:In reply to alfadriver :
The livestreams are pretty useless. Oddly, knowing that this thing is 100x more better than Hubble and will be able to see some of the really old/far stuff, I'm more excited to see what it can do with our local scenery. Will we be able to get more detail of our solar system? They just released recent Hubble shots of all the planets, but imagine 100x more resolution/magnification. Im excited for Saturn and the moons of Jupiter.
I'm excited to finally get a good picture of Uranus.
LOL.
I'll show myself out.
In reply to Indy - Guy :
Someone had to do it. Thanks.
I'm more than a little surprised that it's barely moving faster than an airliner. .1928mi/s is about 690mph. You ain't gonna get anywhere going that slow man!
In reply to bobzilla :
In 220,000 km it has to stop. With the lest amount of fuel possible. Theoretically, this is a ball being thrown into space that should peak and stop 1.5M km from the origin.
And it's scheduled to do that distance in another two weeks or so- which is about 1/3 of the time to get to L2.
The reason it is going so slow (from what I know) is that it has no ability to slow down. The thrusters are oriented towards the earth (I am assuming that is where all the correction burns will be needed in the future).
The L2 point is a point of stability that will actually pull things slightly to it (gravity / orbital dynamics thing). The JWST will need to be going slow enough when it gets near the L2 point so that it can enter orbit around it (which will be very slow). If necessary they can burn to go faster / farther, but have to be super careful not to over shoot.
It's a bit like having a car with no brakes and a slightly sloped driveway that you need to push to a certain speed so that it will be slow enough at the top of the driveway so you can get out and throw some blocks under the wheels and not drive onto the down slop that is at the end of your driveway.
The last major burn for the telescope was successful- JWST is now in orbit around L2.
All that is left it final mirror aiming and instrument calibration.
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