WEBB IS FULLY DEPLOYED!
The largest, most complex telescope ever launched into space is fully deployed.
Nominal Event Time: Launch + 14 days (Saturday 1/8/22)
Status: Completed. WATCH: Post-Deployment Briefing | Re-Watch Live Broadcast
Webb will be the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.
Webb will continue to travel to the second Lagrange point (L2) for another two weeks, at which point it will enter a large orbit around the L2 point. The following five months will be used to cool the telescope to operating temperature, fine-tune the mirror alignment, and calibrate the instruments.
Comment: The Webb observatory is one of mankind’s great technological achievements and the media can’t be bothered to cover it. As Malcolm Muggeridge described us all, “the antic caperings of a degenerate stock.” pl
https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/deploymentExplorer.html
Don’t expect any MSM coverage until it sends back some data that could be enhanced into something colorful and photogenic. Boring scientific data won’t cut it. Even then being science it won’t be popular.
TTG
You mean like Fauci “Science, c’est moi?”
pl,
Yes, and it’s government science as well. Quite a hurdle to overcome. But don’t get me wrong. What the JWST team has done so far is absolutely magnificent.
Fauci “Science, c’est moi?” is very good.
Col. Lang,
The execution of this complex deployment was flawless. A testament to the engineering prowess and the relentless testing on the ground. From the heat shield to the mirror actuators that can move in sub-millimeter increments in extreme cold is just amazing. Kudos to the JWST team who worked on it for 15 years. They have also minimized the fuel usage, so the life span will be greater than a decade.
The astrophysics learning will be immense as all the data will be archived and available to researchers for decades. It is time to build the next generation Hubble to join JWST and Roman when it gets launched next.
Sam
Yes, and my “cheese eating surrender monkey” relatives saved enough fuel on the launch to keep Webb in operation years beyond ten.
Breaking News from MSM:
Webb telescope still unable to find intelligent life at Mar-A-Lago, USA.
(They finally found a way to cover this news)
Nobody talks about it because the main spokespersons are boring scientists who can’t break it down without digging in the weeds for an hour.
They need a layman person who can break it down for people who hoard toilet paper and wait in line over 5 hours for a virus test despite not being sick ok.
1. Speak 8th grade level.
2. 30 seconds – 2 min tops.
3. Compare Hubble to the Webb.
5. Big pictures big lettering.
6. Night talks shows. tik tok. The View.
Babeltuap
Yes. You have to talk down to morons here and abroad.
The fact is, the larger the audience, the more basic the common denominators required to sustain it.
If we ever incorporated basic logic into understanding our reality, a lot would be more comprehensible. Then we could better understand the forces driving us.
The assumption is that complexity is difficult to comprehend, but the reality is that simplicity can be equally difficult to process. For example, a chicken is more complex than an egg, but we are more able to relate to the chicken. For one thing, they have a pecking order, basic appetites, etc. On the other hand, with the egg we are just staring into the biological abyss.
An amazing program. Consider how the Mars rovers lasted longer than anticipated I am optimistic about what can be accomplished. The European Space Agency did a great job in this team program.
Having met NASA, ESA and Hubble engineers I wish all the best.
I’d also like to ask everyone to imagine all the contingencies ESA and NASA planned and practiced for. As far as we know the blue sky plan worked every step. I wonder how many binders of back-up procedures were under each desk.
The Automatic Earth website had a graphic comparing mirror size between Hubble and Webb. https://theautomaticearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/WebbHubbleMirror.jpg
NBC Nightly News just did a one minute story about today’s achievement. Can’t expect much more coverage than that at this stage of the mission. I don’t remember any coverage of any of the previous L2 telescopes including the two still in service at L2, the ESA Gaia 3D Optical Observatory and the Russian/German Spectre RG Xray Observatory.
walrus
What do you do with this?
Paste it as a link in a browser – works in Firefox
The image displayed is “funny.”
Its a sad attempt at humor… Seriously, the Webb is a great achievement that I am sure will return us knowledge out of all proportion to its cost.
I am very interested in the data because I think it will demonstrate that the universe is a much stranger place than we think.
Don’t think we shall see any test images from the Webb Telescope just yet, but this link details a very busy year ahead for space-related engineering, and scientific endeavors:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10368601/Roundup-key-space-highlights-look-forward-2022.html
A pity that Father Lemaitre died over fifty years ago. He should be alive to witness the ” first luminous glows after the Big Bang.”
It’s going to be amazing. Eventually it will become a household word like Hubble but that took a while. Need at least another year. The cooling process alone is 6 months. And there is no ability to repair it manually. Not yet anyway.
Babeltuap
By then it may not be needed.
Open up any MSM web portal and you’ll see that “news” like a panda rolling in the snow will get more coverage. Science gets very little media time (unless it is COVID related ofc). Sad, but that’s the world we are living at the moment.