James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
- Thread starter thecoder
- Start date
Yes, they did. It will be too far out in space to be reached by astronauts to perform repairs.
Cross your fingers and toes, because if this thing works, it will help show how old the universe really is. Current peg is like 14 or 15 billion years, based on Hubble. My intuition says it is MUCH older than that, by about a trillion years. JWebb will help substantiate that.
The James Webb Space Telescope is fully deployed. So what's next for the biggest observatory off Earth?
On Saturday (Jan. 8), the new observatory, the largest space telescope ever built, successfully unfolded its final primary mirror segment to cap what NASA has billed as one of its most complicated deployments in space ever. The Webb mission team is now turning its attention to directing the telescope to its final destination, while getting key parts of the observatory online for its astronomy work.
Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2) about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from our planet. If Webb gets to the right zone, it can use a minimum of fuel to stay in place thanks to a near-perfect alignment with the sun, Earth and moon.
But it's not just maneuvers in space that the control teams will need to execute. Webb still has a lot of complex commissioning operations ahead, and NASA particularly pointed to aligning its mirror and getting its instruments ready as key milestones to watch for in the next few weeks.
On Saturday (Jan. 8), the new observatory, the largest space telescope ever built, successfully unfolded its final primary mirror segment to cap what NASA has billed as one of its most complicated deployments in space ever. The Webb mission team is now turning its attention to directing the telescope to its final destination, while getting key parts of the observatory online for its astronomy work.
Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2) about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from our planet. If Webb gets to the right zone, it can use a minimum of fuel to stay in place thanks to a near-perfect alignment with the sun, Earth and moon.
But it's not just maneuvers in space that the control teams will need to execute. Webb still has a lot of complex commissioning operations ahead, and NASA particularly pointed to aligning its mirror and getting its instruments ready as key milestones to watch for in the next few weeks.
I reckon it's orbit will decay, and it will eventually burn in earth's atmosphere. Or crash into the moon, depending on the moon's position when orbit decay starts.
It will be parked at L2 using fuel only for pointing. About 20 years worth. https://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/webb-l2.html
You can follow it here.
https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html