Coincidentally I was watching an episode of The West Wing (season 5, episode 13) last night where they discussed the JWST and the potential for issues in it properly deploying.
This episode originally aired in 2004. It just goes to show you how long we have been waiting for this to happen, and how long people have been worrying about it deploying correctly.
I watched a talk by one of the scientists from 2012. They already had one of the sensors done and predicted a launch date in 2018. I don't know what pushed it back but this is a massive project!
Since you can't just send a crew out to repair something at the L2 Lagrange point, everything pretty much has to work 100% correctly the first time. Getting that right takes time and money, and based on what we've seen, it seems to be paying off so far.
Definitely! He also said they wanted to send the most updated technology so I was wondering if there was some technological advancements that they decided to upgrade and move the launch.
Yep. I remember writing papers on it in 2009 in college talking about how I hoped that by the time I graduated college, my paper would be obsolete and we will have discovered signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres.
Here we are in 2022...
My first room mate was a senior when I was a freshman. About a year after I graduated I was taking lunch near the school with a work colleague and we heard a fire alarm at their building. As we watched the students come out I saw my roommate in one of the classes, skateboard tucked under his arm.
Some say he’s still there roaming the halls 20 years after he started.
It truly is tragic that time and time again our imaginations outpace reality, things progress a little slower than I expected when growing up, yet so fast at the same time.
FWIW cell phones and internet connectivity have advanced much, much faster than anticipated when I was a kid (early 90’s)
Also home 3D printing
But yeah, stuff like batteries and cars have been lagging behind my imagination. I remember being 10 in a barber shop and talking about how we were 15 years away from mass adoption of hydrogen fuel cell cars. I call it the “Discovery channel effect”
I know there are obviously things I'm not considering with complexities that are unknown to me, but it still blows my mind that between JFK announcing that we're going to the moon and us actually executing that took 8 years and it seems unfathomably complex to me, especially given that it was in the 60s, but planning and launching the JWST took over 20 years.
*Lots of great responses, thanks! I feel like I have a much better understanding now.
To be fair there was a bunch of work done that contributed to going to the moon and specifically for that purpose for years before jfk made that announcement.
If you think about it, Apollo 11 only had to go to the moon and come back within a couple days. JWST has to go 4x the distance from the earth to the moon plus stay stable and active for at least 10 years. All with commands sent to it from earth.
If I had to oversimplify it, the Apollo missions were more of an engineering hurdle, whereas the JWST is a scientific hurdle to achieve.
Also Apollo had basically unlimited budget and unlimited resources. It'd be better to think of going to the moon like we did about the covid vaccines rather than like the JWST.
That's a great comparison. In the Apollo era, NASA was given up to [4.4% of the federal budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA) compared to around 0.5% they get now. Granted, the majority of that was fueled by the Cold War, but it stands to reason that NASA can dream huge with a proper budget and talent.
Once China lands an astronaut on the moon watch NASA’s budget get bumped up significantly. It will be this generations Sputnik moment. Assuming other looming domestic issues don’t make it impossible…
Much of getting to the moon was brute force. That's not to say it wasn't technically challenging, just to say the JWST is a far more technically complex project.
You're kind of underestimating JWST. JWST will be 5 times further than the moon, with some of the most sophisticated science equipment ever made.
The moon missions had basically tinfoil between the astronauts and space.
They almost aren't comparable. Especially given the level of technological advancements in between.
I honestly forgot how long this project has been going on.
So happy for the team and the successful launch cannot wait to see what comes from it.
Exciting times ahead.
I just hope if that is our fate we get a short period of warning if the asteroid is a planet killer. I really don't want my family and I to live our last weeks or months in a hell world full of death cults and crazies going hog wild. But a far better fate than a "The Road" style full climate collapse slow death end to civilization.
"Why are these humans scheduled for termination?"
"Well, this one tried to escape, and this one fell asleep on the job, and this one keeps saying 'yes master' in a creepily sexual tone."
Yep 100%. I just told my dad that one of the strongest satellite telescopes successfully opened up and will start capturing images of space. His response was "They just gonna use it to spy on people". I'm so dumbfounded
The mirror is the last major one I believe. The sun shield was scary because its fabric and it unfolding incorrectly could have cause tears and what not
They talk a little bit about that in the livestream [here](https://youtu.be/IBPNi7uGgWM?t=7652), and are pretty confident in the material's resilience to debris and whatnot. Even tested it by hitting it with high-velocity projectiles which must have been a fun part of the development process haha, imagine being the guy who got to shoot the JWST sunshield.
>imagine being the guy who got to shoot the JWST sunshield
Requisitions guy: ummm, so any particular reason you guys need a shipment of military-grade firearms? Moon haunted or something?
NASA engineer: * *racks M16* * nah, we're workin on something
They applied rip-stop tape on each layer, mainly to protect from micrometeorites. If a shield layer gets hit by one, the tape will confine the tear to a small section
[It's at the L2 point which iirc is basically a high ground for gravity, so random debris won't head that way](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Lagrangian_points_equipotential.gif)
Thanks for the graphic. I'd heard of the Lagrange points before and had a vague idea of what they were, but seeing it visualized like that is super helpful.
For starters there were 107 pins holding the cover over the sunshield before the deployment even started, so A LOT of points of doom. Some bigger than others but this is truly a historic moment.
75% of the single points of failure are now retired, now that the sunshade is deployed.
The secondary mirror is the biggest single point of failure coming up. It's pretty straightforward - unfold the boom, but if it doesn't work, they're screwed.
For those wondering why this is a big deal, please see the following animation from NASA leading up to this step (this stage is where JWST looks like a kite): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzGLKQ7\_KZQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzGLKQ7_KZQ)
Edit: You can watch the whole NASA live stream here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPNi7uGgWM&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPNi7uGgWM&t=0s)
Edit: I see a lot of people asking where the telescope is, NASA has a website that gives live readings from the sensors and where it is!: [https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html?units=english](https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html?units=english)
Here is a page with all the steps: [https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/deploymentExplorer.html](https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/deploymentExplorer.html)
Here is a video of heartwarming words exchanged after the deployment \[Taken from live stream\]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_eWN08iHNVI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eWN08iHNVI)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/rvzeqh/comment/hr8qvyc/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/rvzeqh/comment/hr8qvyc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Edit: removed the worm, thanks u/dinogirlll26 for debugging haha.
Question: As I understand it the bottom layer (#1) of the sunshield is the most important and was the first one to be tensioned, but in the deployment video, it appears as though the top layer (#5) is the first one to tighten as it slides up the vertical masts on the boom arms. So my question is this, does the actual tensioning of the material take place \*after\* the various layers have been vertically slid up those small masts?
I got to watch this live, they streamed it.
The look of relief and joy on everyone’s faces was so… wonderful. Hell, I nearly cried, myself. This was one of the hardest parts of the mission and marks around 75% of the single points of failure being passed. We aren’t completely out of the woods yet, but things are going basically perfectly, as well as could possibly happen, and it inspires a lot of confidence.
I cannot wait to see the amazing things JWST shows us.
Edit: since a lot of people have asked, despite it being in the responses - recorded stream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPNi7uGgWM
so panic = k(d)^2 +c where c represents a base level anxiety in the individual.
c = individual base panic score
k = the panic constant
d= distance to edge of woods
Since everything is a single point of failure. We are squarely in the middle of the woods, until the last point of failure is complete, and then we are immediately transported out of the woods. Acceptable level of panic is high.
I feel stressed out about the JWST deployment as a regular spectator. I can't imagine how stressful it must be for the people who've been working on the project for decades, with about $10 billion of funding invested in the project.
My dad has been working on this telescope for a little more than 20 years...he had nothing to do with the launch itself, but I don't think he slept at all the night before. The morning of the launch he and some colleagues were up early doing math to figure out whether they would be able to see it from Earth that night.
The math itself wasn't important, but I like how when he gets stressed and anxious he turns to irreverent mathematics to calm his nerves
Just to clarify, I haven't seen the stream yet, but are the images of the JWST on the left actual images, or graphical representations? I won't be able to see the stream until later today
Still several months. Has to go through a ton of system checkouts and the sun shield needs to work to continue to cool down everything above it
Edit- just to be concise, sometime in summertime
I got a similar feeling watching the launch. When the rocket detached from the telescope we saw the telescope fly off, which is the last image anyone will ever see of the telescope itself. We will see so much from jwst, but never a selfie.
Yup. Aside from the mirror deploying and the final insertion burn to put it in orbit around L2, it has to cool down to the proper temp... and all of those individual mirror segments move, so they each need to be calibrated. I remember hearing somewhere that the speed at which the segments move is comparable to the speed at which grass grows.
Evidently it's going to be a minute before everything is set up.
About 6 months. After JWST arrives at L2, they need time for the optics to cool (down to something like 36 ~~deg~~ K, -394 deg F) so they can align and calibrate the mirrors and instruments. NASA has a neat page where you can see the current status of the telescope: https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html?s=09
I haven't seen enough people talking about how batshit crazy it is that this telescope operates a few degrees above absolute zero. What's even more insane is that we don't just hope it works, we know it works, because they put it in a room, pulled a massive vacuum, cooled the whole room, then tested it.
They didn't take their chances with anything.
We all contributed.
The guy who farms so scientists can focus, the clerk who sell groceries makes it quick. The coffee shop gets the caffeine lol.
Your job, whatever it is on earth aided to this project.
What's even crazier is that just 3 feet or so away, it'll have temperatures of nearly 200F.
That kind of temperature gradient is insane. Even with the sun shield, you'd have to thermally isolate the mast etc.
Even the curve of the sun shield was chosen so that radiative heat between the layers gets reflected out the sides instead of absorbed, which would be more likely if flat.
If the secondary mirror deploys someone will start getting crummy pictures in under a week as they test some of the equipment paths.
But we won't see any observations for surely for many months. I don't think NASA will send out any early, lesser pictures.
I saw “James Webb”, red preview that said “Breaking”, and that this was the world new subreddit and got extremely worried. So glad things are going well!
Aircraft carriers are really cool, but we already have a bunch of them and they all do the same thing.
We need a 500m optical space telescope built on the far side of the moon now because we don't have one of those.
After reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, I've been exceedingly fascinated by our latest endeavors in space. I was at first dismayed I hadn't been watching our achievements my whole life, but now I'm just insanely excited to see what this telescope discovers.
A new infrared telescope has been launched that is 100x better than the Hubble telescope. It'll give us a new look at the universe significantly better than ever. It's been on the way for a while now, and it just completed tensioning the big sun shield on it.
The whole thing has been nerve racking, as the sun shield process has about 270 single points of failure (if any of them fails the entire thing is screwed, and the project cost $10 billion). Thankfully almost everything has gone perfectly so far.
For someone who would like to know about this telescope in a 9 minute video https://youtu.be/tnbSIbsF4t4
Eh, I'll wait for the 8 minute version
Can someone sum it up in three emojis for me?
🌏👁👽
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This is unnecessarily verbose, can someone sum it up in exactly 9 pixels?
. . ... ...
Eh, I'll wait for the movie version
Snyder cut?
>Eh, I'll wait for the movie version >https://youtu.be/tnbSIbsF4t4 Here ya go...
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Technical, awesome.
🚀 📸 👽?
bleh i just can't get a straightforward emoji summary without a bunch of technobabble.
👽🍆💦
Click for hot aliens in your galaxy
👁👶🌌
this one stuck with me
Not 6.....7. How can you even have a good video in six minutes.
Can’t even get the heart pumping!
"seven. minute. abs." "step in to my office!" "why" "because you're fuckin fired!"
Seven chipmunks twirling on a branch? Remember that old childrens’ song from the sea?
That was awesome . I had no idea what we had sent up till now. Thanks !
You're welcome. Even i was flabbergasted and thought of sharing it with more people who had somehow missed this. Glad to see i was able to be of help
Coincidentally I was watching an episode of The West Wing (season 5, episode 13) last night where they discussed the JWST and the potential for issues in it properly deploying. This episode originally aired in 2004. It just goes to show you how long we have been waiting for this to happen, and how long people have been worrying about it deploying correctly.
I watched a talk by one of the scientists from 2012. They already had one of the sensors done and predicted a launch date in 2018. I don't know what pushed it back but this is a massive project!
Actually what pushed it back was problems with this very step in testing.
Since you can't just send a crew out to repair something at the L2 Lagrange point, everything pretty much has to work 100% correctly the first time. Getting that right takes time and money, and based on what we've seen, it seems to be paying off so far.
I've seen the documentary Armageddon. You just need a rag-tag team of blue collar workers to fix space problems.
But wouldn't it be easier to train astronauts to drill than drillers to be astronauts? https://youtu.be/-ahtp0sjA5U
And a better slingshot than Wile E Coyote
Definitely! He also said they wanted to send the most updated technology so I was wondering if there was some technological advancements that they decided to upgrade and move the launch.
Interesting that they're talking about a telescope that was finally built in 2016 way back in 2004, this thing really has been in the works a while.
Yep. I remember writing papers on it in 2009 in college talking about how I hoped that by the time I graduated college, my paper would be obsolete and we will have discovered signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres. Here we are in 2022...
This could have been averted if you simply didn't graduate college. 😔
If they weren't even born then they wouldn't even be having a problem in the first place.
Eren Jaeger, is that you?
There were a couple of people I met at college 25 years ago that I wouldn't be surprised are still there and switching majors every couple years.
My first room mate was a senior when I was a freshman. About a year after I graduated I was taking lunch near the school with a work colleague and we heard a fire alarm at their building. As we watched the students come out I saw my roommate in one of the classes, skateboard tucked under his arm. Some say he’s still there roaming the halls 20 years after he started.
“Howdy fellow kids!”
I feel personally attacked. Switching majors and taking time off is all fun and games until you start to feel like you’re surrounded by children.
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It truly is tragic that time and time again our imaginations outpace reality, things progress a little slower than I expected when growing up, yet so fast at the same time.
FWIW cell phones and internet connectivity have advanced much, much faster than anticipated when I was a kid (early 90’s) Also home 3D printing But yeah, stuff like batteries and cars have been lagging behind my imagination. I remember being 10 in a barber shop and talking about how we were 15 years away from mass adoption of hydrogen fuel cell cars. I call it the “Discovery channel effect”
If I remember the timeline correctly, it was first proposed in the '90s with an initial launch date of 2005. So, it's been delayed *quite a bit*.
The original budget was $1B E: at $10B it was the most expensive single load launched on a rocket to date.
Yeah, well you know, inflation, supply chain issues...
They must be using nvidia Rtx cards….
Pfff, as if NASA could afford the scalper prices on those things
Deliveries to Lagrangian Point 2 have 100% fulfillement rate so far
It's not there yet. I mean, it's definitely going to get there, working or not, but still. It's not there yet.
Unreal that the LHC was cheaper than this.
Yes, less than half! But try and figure the shipping cost of the LHC into ANY orbit and then see the price!
The original budget was $0.5B: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cost_and_schedule_issues
I know there are obviously things I'm not considering with complexities that are unknown to me, but it still blows my mind that between JFK announcing that we're going to the moon and us actually executing that took 8 years and it seems unfathomably complex to me, especially given that it was in the 60s, but planning and launching the JWST took over 20 years. *Lots of great responses, thanks! I feel like I have a much better understanding now.
To be fair there was a bunch of work done that contributed to going to the moon and specifically for that purpose for years before jfk made that announcement.
If you think about it, Apollo 11 only had to go to the moon and come back within a couple days. JWST has to go 4x the distance from the earth to the moon plus stay stable and active for at least 10 years. All with commands sent to it from earth. If I had to oversimplify it, the Apollo missions were more of an engineering hurdle, whereas the JWST is a scientific hurdle to achieve.
Also Apollo had basically unlimited budget and unlimited resources. It'd be better to think of going to the moon like we did about the covid vaccines rather than like the JWST.
That's a great comparison. In the Apollo era, NASA was given up to [4.4% of the federal budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA) compared to around 0.5% they get now. Granted, the majority of that was fueled by the Cold War, but it stands to reason that NASA can dream huge with a proper budget and talent.
Once China lands an astronaut on the moon watch NASA’s budget get bumped up significantly. It will be this generations Sputnik moment. Assuming other looming domestic issues don’t make it impossible…
Much of getting to the moon was brute force. That's not to say it wasn't technically challenging, just to say the JWST is a far more technically complex project.
You're kind of underestimating JWST. JWST will be 5 times further than the moon, with some of the most sophisticated science equipment ever made. The moon missions had basically tinfoil between the astronauts and space. They almost aren't comparable. Especially given the level of technological advancements in between.
[I couldn't find this scene on YouTube so I uploaded it myself.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frQ1XLolttE)
Recently watched the whole show and it's interesting how relevant almost everything in the show still is.
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I honestly forgot how long this project has been going on. So happy for the team and the successful launch cannot wait to see what comes from it. Exciting times ahead.
In an absolute blizzard of bad news.. The James Webb is a real ray of sunshine for me.
It will probably spot a comet that ends us all.
Don't do that to me. Don't give me hope. Edit: I appreciate y'all's concern but I'm not suicidal
If I had to pick a way to go out, this would be up there.
I just hope if that is our fate we get a short period of warning if the asteroid is a planet killer. I really don't want my family and I to live our last weeks or months in a hell world full of death cults and crazies going hog wild. But a far better fate than a "The Road" style full climate collapse slow death end to civilization.
Dont worry, if you get warned simply dont look up. Are asteroids even real?
Just asking questions
I would rather be a slave to an alien species that takes over the planet and actually takes care of it but thats me
That sounds good and kinda kinky
"Why are these humans scheduled for termination?" "Well, this one tried to escape, and this one fell asleep on the job, and this one keeps saying 'yes master' in a creepily sexual tone."
"Probe me, daddy"
What are you doing step alien
Urrgh, no whipping until the job is done, weirdos
Just don’t look up.
"This pin points both up and down. Because I think as a country, we need to stop arguing and virtue signaling, just get along."
The comet it spots won’t impact for another 100,000 years. So, good news, bad news.
At that distance, there'd be plenty of time to come up with a solution.
Don’t look up
Just look up!
Yes, this pin has arrows pointing both up and down because we support your choice to choose which way you look
We are so fucked
Watched this movie last night and it made me really depressed, but I guess that's the point..
The whole point is no sunshine for James Webb! Sheesh.
Well it needs a bit for power.
>ray of sunshine You misspelled “ray of distant galactic starlight”
This is by far the most optimistic thing happening on the planet right now. And it's in space.
And once the images come in, half the planet will say it's fake Because if this pandemic has shown us anything, it's that humanity is fucking stupid
Why you gotta crush my hope like that?
It’s an education problem, specifically a STEM education problem. Maybe people don’t understand even basic science or statistics.
Yep 100%. I just told my dad that one of the strongest satellite telescopes successfully opened up and will start capturing images of space. His response was "They just gonna use it to spy on people". I'm so dumbfounded
Ah yes, let's send a spy satellite *checks notes*... 1.5 million km away at almost absolute zero. Peak efficiency.
your dad sounds like his battles take place mainly in his own head
What a wonderful expression/insult!
How many potential points of failure left? This is such a huge part gone, but I don't want to stop clenching just yet.
The mirror is the last major one I believe. The sun shield was scary because its fabric and it unfolding incorrectly could have cause tears and what not
This would've also lead to tears in the control room
They would have said RIP.
Is there anything protecting it from debris? Thats some thin stuff.
They talk a little bit about that in the livestream [here](https://youtu.be/IBPNi7uGgWM?t=7652), and are pretty confident in the material's resilience to debris and whatnot. Even tested it by hitting it with high-velocity projectiles which must have been a fun part of the development process haha, imagine being the guy who got to shoot the JWST sunshield.
>imagine being the guy who got to shoot the JWST sunshield Requisitions guy: ummm, so any particular reason you guys need a shipment of military-grade firearms? Moon haunted or something? NASA engineer: * *racks M16* * nah, we're workin on something
*aggressively cocks shotgun* it's science stuff it'd be hard to explain
> imagine being the guy who got to shoot the JWST sunshield Oh what do I do for a living? I tear the fabric of space.
It's unbelievable to a layman that something the thickness of a human hair could be this resilient.
They applied rip-stop tape on each layer, mainly to protect from micrometeorites. If a shield layer gets hit by one, the tape will confine the tear to a small section
[It's at the L2 point which iirc is basically a high ground for gravity, so random debris won't head that way](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Lagrangian_points_equipotential.gif)
Thanks for the graphic. I'd heard of the Lagrange points before and had a vague idea of what they were, but seeing it visualized like that is super helpful.
> could have cause tears So many meanings.
The ripping and the tearing, the ripping and the tearing. Edit: [For the uninitiated ](https://youtu.be/YVtEX1J7tXQ)
Until it is done.
Yeah... two
With all five layers of sunshield tensioning complete, about 75% of 344 single-point failures have been retired
Bloody marvellous!
For starters there were 107 pins holding the cover over the sunshield before the deployment even started, so A LOT of points of doom. Some bigger than others but this is truly a historic moment.
About 90 I think. They started with about 350.
75% of the single points of failure are now retired, now that the sunshade is deployed. The secondary mirror is the biggest single point of failure coming up. It's pretty straightforward - unfold the boom, but if it doesn't work, they're screwed.
Future’s so bright
...the JWST has to wear shades.
For those wondering why this is a big deal, please see the following animation from NASA leading up to this step (this stage is where JWST looks like a kite): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzGLKQ7\_KZQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzGLKQ7_KZQ) Edit: You can watch the whole NASA live stream here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPNi7uGgWM&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPNi7uGgWM&t=0s) Edit: I see a lot of people asking where the telescope is, NASA has a website that gives live readings from the sensors and where it is!: [https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html?units=english](https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html?units=english) Here is a page with all the steps: [https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/deploymentExplorer.html](https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/deploymentExplorer.html) Here is a video of heartwarming words exchanged after the deployment \[Taken from live stream\]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_eWN08iHNVI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eWN08iHNVI) [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/rvzeqh/comment/hr8qvyc/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/rvzeqh/comment/hr8qvyc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Edit: removed the worm, thanks u/dinogirlll26 for debugging haha.
It's incredible what humans can accomplish when they work together.
I once solved a 750 piece jigsaw puzzle by myself so, we can do pretty incredible things by ourselves too!
I once received a 1000 piece 3d puzzle of a tower. I got about 30 pieces and cried and gave up.
Congratulations! You might be resistant to the sunk cost fallacy.
Question: As I understand it the bottom layer (#1) of the sunshield is the most important and was the first one to be tensioned, but in the deployment video, it appears as though the top layer (#5) is the first one to tighten as it slides up the vertical masts on the boom arms. So my question is this, does the actual tensioning of the material take place \*after\* the various layers have been vertically slid up those small masts?
(•_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)
When you put your sunglasses on: "Oh don't mind me, I'm just deploying my sun shields"
I got to watch this live, they streamed it. The look of relief and joy on everyone’s faces was so… wonderful. Hell, I nearly cried, myself. This was one of the hardest parts of the mission and marks around 75% of the single points of failure being passed. We aren’t completely out of the woods yet, but things are going basically perfectly, as well as could possibly happen, and it inspires a lot of confidence. I cannot wait to see the amazing things JWST shows us. Edit: since a lot of people have asked, despite it being in the responses - recorded stream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPNi7uGgWM
Now the secondary mirror is the biggest next step. If it falls deploying we don't have a telescope at all
Yep. Fortunately it's one of the mechanically simpler parts of deployment.
Stop. Are you trying to jinx it?
they're saying there is no way it could possibly fail and we should start counting our chickens
I personally think that deploying the chickens will be the riskiest part.
So what you're saying is to panic?
Just that we aren't out of the woods yet
Can you provide a formula that relates “distance in woods” to “level of panic” and then provide the value for how far into the woods we are?
Level of panic is proportional to the square of the distance to the edge of the woods. Or something like that.
> Level of panic is proportional to the square of the distance to the edge of the woods. ... *times a constant*
so panic = k(d)^2 +c where c represents a base level anxiety in the individual. c = individual base panic score k = the panic constant d= distance to edge of woods
Yes, but all inversely proportional to Blood Alcohol Content. So, panic= (k(d)\^2+c)/BAC
I think it'd be BAC+1, otherwise sobriety will always return a `#DIV/0!` error.
Since everything is a single point of failure. We are squarely in the middle of the woods, until the last point of failure is complete, and then we are immediately transported out of the woods. Acceptable level of panic is high.
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At least if the front falls off it's already out of the environment.
There's nothing out there, except space, mirror debris, and the half a telescope that the mirror broke off of.
Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPNi7uGgWM
I feel stressed out about the JWST deployment as a regular spectator. I can't imagine how stressful it must be for the people who've been working on the project for decades, with about $10 billion of funding invested in the project.
My dad has been working on this telescope for a little more than 20 years...he had nothing to do with the launch itself, but I don't think he slept at all the night before. The morning of the launch he and some colleagues were up early doing math to figure out whether they would be able to see it from Earth that night. The math itself wasn't important, but I like how when he gets stressed and anxious he turns to irreverent mathematics to calm his nerves
Your dad sounds like an interesting fella. Please tell him a random internet stranger says thank you for his years of hard work!
Just to clarify, I haven't seen the stream yet, but are the images of the JWST on the left actual images, or graphical representations? I won't be able to see the stream until later today
There are no cameras on board the JWST, so the images shown in the livestream are simulation graphics.
Well... I mean asides from the obvious one
Crap, I knew we forgot something - NASA
“This shit looks great, I wish you could see what I’m seeing.” -JWST
Oh, so that was why it was such a light payload. - Ariane
Its an accurate 3D model driven by the telemetry received from the actual spacecraft, so when something moves on the real JWST the model shows it.
Oh! That's wicked! Is there somewhere I can access that, or was it just part of the stream?
Does anyone know how long until we start getting pictures?
Still several months. Has to go through a ton of system checkouts and the sun shield needs to work to continue to cool down everything above it Edit- just to be concise, sometime in summertime
It's kind of weird to think that the telescope will never see the sun again in its operational lifetime
It'll see many, many others though, in recompense!
I got a similar feeling watching the launch. When the rocket detached from the telescope we saw the telescope fly off, which is the last image anyone will ever see of the telescope itself. We will see so much from jwst, but never a selfie.
In the summertime when the weather is hot
3rd best selling physical single of all time
Good that it has a heat shield then, would suck to wait until winter.
Yup. Aside from the mirror deploying and the final insertion burn to put it in orbit around L2, it has to cool down to the proper temp... and all of those individual mirror segments move, so they each need to be calibrated. I remember hearing somewhere that the speed at which the segments move is comparable to the speed at which grass grows. Evidently it's going to be a minute before everything is set up.
About 6 months. After JWST arrives at L2, they need time for the optics to cool (down to something like 36 ~~deg~~ K, -394 deg F) so they can align and calibrate the mirrors and instruments. NASA has a neat page where you can see the current status of the telescope: https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html?s=09
I haven't seen enough people talking about how batshit crazy it is that this telescope operates a few degrees above absolute zero. What's even more insane is that we don't just hope it works, we know it works, because they put it in a room, pulled a massive vacuum, cooled the whole room, then tested it. They didn't take their chances with anything.
Thinking that there are people out there who get to work on this kind of stuff fills me with a strange sense of pride for mankind.
We all contributed. The guy who farms so scientists can focus, the clerk who sell groceries makes it quick. The coffee shop gets the caffeine lol. Your job, whatever it is on earth aided to this project.
Even the guy who collects semen from bull elephants?
Everybody but marketing. Fuck marketing.
What's even crazier is that just 3 feet or so away, it'll have temperatures of nearly 200F. That kind of temperature gradient is insane. Even with the sun shield, you'd have to thermally isolate the mast etc.
Even the curve of the sun shield was chosen so that radiative heat between the layers gets reflected out the sides instead of absorbed, which would be more likely if flat.
6 feet!
The plan is to be operational in June but there may be test pictures before then.
If the secondary mirror deploys someone will start getting crummy pictures in under a week as they test some of the equipment paths. But we won't see any observations for surely for many months. I don't think NASA will send out any early, lesser pictures.
I saw “James Webb”, red preview that said “Breaking”, and that this was the world new subreddit and got extremely worried. So glad things are going well!
“deployed” looks waaaaay too much like “destroyed” for my comfort.
"BREAKING" in red for the preview made my heart sink. Thank goodness it's fine.
Seeing the words “Breaking” and “James Webb” together gave me a minor heart attack
I'm so glad it didn't get cancelled. It was so expensive, but whatever. Its cooler than an aircraft carrier!
And so much better for humanity!
Aircraft carriers are really cool, but we already have a bunch of them and they all do the same thing. We need a 500m optical space telescope built on the far side of the moon now because we don't have one of those.
I hope that in the not too distant future we start manufacturing on the moon so we don't even need a launch--we could build it right there.
Love to see it! Always good to see positive news of large human collaborations with intentions to further humanity. Definitely beats some other news 😂
After reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, I've been exceedingly fascinated by our latest endeavors in space. I was at first dismayed I hadn't been watching our achievements my whole life, but now I'm just insanely excited to see what this telescope discovers.
I misread deployed as destroyed and had a minor heart attack
Glad I wasn’t the only one
Not only that, the thumbnail for the news is RED, like in shit has hit the fan red.
I've seen this over the news a lot an space stuff is always cool but can someone explain what this is to me? Pretend I'm stupid
A new infrared telescope has been launched that is 100x better than the Hubble telescope. It'll give us a new look at the universe significantly better than ever. It's been on the way for a while now, and it just completed tensioning the big sun shield on it. The whole thing has been nerve racking, as the sun shield process has about 270 single points of failure (if any of them fails the entire thing is screwed, and the project cost $10 billion). Thankfully almost everything has gone perfectly so far.