Tomorrow Dec 25th 2021, is a very big day! James Webb Scope is headed out.

[sarumbear]

Yes, kind of. That's the whole point of going to L2

Thank you for the video. It is stunning. I had no idea, although I should have thought after reading about eliminating infrared energy.

 

[JRS]

Cloud deck very low, but hey she made it. Now just need to park it at L2--which BTW was a requirement for the probe that "touched a star" just days ago as it swooped past our sun bathed in it's million plus degree corona. NASA has scheduled a press briefing at 09:00 EST.

 

[JRS]

So is there some law that says all audio video conferencing, irrespective of the organization's technical expertise and budget, will invariably be bollixed? One would think that NASA could manage to do a live Q and A with phone callers. I mean after all the Radio shock-jocks manage this on a daily basis.

 

[JRS]

<edit>An excellent video which discusses the awesome engineering that went into the spacecrafts parasol (made of kapton) that functions as a five layered thermos bottle and the primary mirror.

(Ah to know my woofers with use Kapton--Aluminum formers actually has something in common with the Webb. )

One really cool part of the technology is the pulse tube cryocooler that couples thermal and acoustic properties to slough heat via a standing wave. Talk about a slick trick. That's discussed at 16 min into the video.

(Ah to know my woofers use Kapton--Aluminum formers actually have something in common with the Webb.

 

[PierreV]

We can also apply the simplistic audio blind tests statistics that are so loved around here to get an idea of the overall mission chances

Assuming there are indeed 300 single points of failure, we need at least 99.9% reliability at each single point to reach a >70% chance of overall mission success. 99.99% reliability at each step gets much better chances, obviously.

It is very nice to have had a successful launch. But, by istelf, as the most dangerous phase (I assume), with 95.5% observed reliability rate, doesn't change the overall risk much.

 

[antcollinet]

Synced to earth - second legrange point.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Is there a rocket that can bring anybody there and back then? Iirc the space shuttle was only capable of going to earth orbit and the sls is comprised of solid rocket fuel. If the sls goes, it goes and cannot be stopped and re-ignited.

Imo the only rocket that might be capable of interesting missions beyond our current frontier is the spacex starship in development.

Anyway, many good tech is just not made for repairs as it only adds to cost and lowers reliability of a product. At least that's what I gathered from watching Munro's teardowns.

Sound like we could have the makings of a movie plot with Elon Musk as the protagonist.

 

[Marc v E]

Sound like we could have the makings of a movie plot with Elon Musk as the protagonist.

I can imagine a plot going something like this:
1) the sls is almost ready to go for its first moon mission
2) starship gets launched to orbit, refuels and just for fun gets sent to the moon....with tonnes more of cargo in its bay, making a mockery of the sls. I can imagine that once complete, Starship would be just what Nasa needs to get space exploration really taking of.

 

[nerdstrike]

Been waiting a long long time for this one to go to space! Project manager nightmare I have no doubt.

I look forward to seeing some science off the back of it.

 

[JustAnandaDourEyedDude]

This was such an exciting launch to watch for me! I rarely watch launches on live TV anymore (still bear mental scars from watching Challenger and Columbia on live TV, plus there have been just so very many launches in recent years). But this was special because of the JWST. Here's hoping the JWST deploys and operates successfully at the L2 point. When it does, this will have been a 'signal' achievement (sorry, couldn't resist) for all agencies, organizations and companies involved in the design, construction, launch and operation of the JWST. Kudos also to Congress (and the advocacy Sen. Mikulski in particular) for funding this. There is a lot riding on the JWST, beyond the scientific data it will provide. If anything goes irreversibly wrong, I think Congress will become reluctant to fund any future space telescopes. The JWST is the analogue for cosmology of the LHC for particle quantum physics.

Hope data from the JWST will 'shed some light' (last one, I promise) on Dark matter and Dark energy that are the placeholders for explanations for anomalous observations behind the current crisis in cosmology. I understand the JWST will enable scientists to peer at the time just after the Dark Ages. Perhaps the data will guide scientists in unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics. Perhaps such a unification would enable scientists to decide between a Big Bang and a Big Bounce. Also, I understand some JWST time is allocated to projects searching for chemical spectra of habitable exoplanets and possible chemical signs of life in their atmospheres. My interest is also aroused by whether theoretical advances enabled by observations using the JWST could further our understanding of the big questions about Life. What is Life, just an emergent epiphenomenon in a multi-scale reality? When and how did it originate? Is there or was there ever extra-terrestrial life? When will Life end (become thermodynamically impossible)? By the last question, I am not referring to my own little life, which will wind down soon enough I expect, or to individual lives of plants and animals, but rather to the overall phenomenon of Life.

On a side-note, since this is ASR, I recall seeing in one of the many YT science videos (can't remember which one) that there were giant acoustic waves (highly nonlinear I am sure; must be the highest SPLs the universe has ever manifested) across the early universe after the Dark Ages, when matter started to condense out. Will the JWST get audiophiles to stop agonizing over Class A/B versus Class D, or DS versus R2R, or arguing about subjective vs objective? The answer to these latter questions is a resounding no.

 

[JRS]

We can also apply the simplistic audio blind tests statistics that are so loved around here to get an idea of the overall mission chances

Assuming there are indeed 300 single points of failure, we need at least 99.9% reliability at each single point to reach a >70% chance of overall mission success. 99.99% reliability at each step gets much better chances, obviously.

It is very nice to have had a successful launch. But, by istelf, as the most dangerous phase (I assume), with 95.5% observed reliability rate, doesn't change the overall risk much.
View attachment 174555

God, don't statistics suck sometimes. Maybe I can throw some shade here.

After listening to the briefing this a.m. which was a bit spirited, the press secretary/engineer guy said that their estimates put launch into appropriate orbit at about 30 percent of the risk, and the remaining 70 percent tied up in the following 300 plus things to get right. But he added that the umber is a little squishy, suggesting either workarounds might be available, or that many of the mission goals might remain salvageable in spite of a node failure. . So shades of gray.

And I love your curve--it serves as a humbling reminder of the need for infallibility in projects of this scope and complexity. Especially when so much at stake. The next 30 days will be very interesting times indeed.

 

[symphara]

NASA has a good site where you can track the progress of the observatory: https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

 

[JWAmerica]

Finally science has advanced to the point that we may be able to get an accurate measure of your mother's circumference and mass.

 

[kchap]

It's actually part of a defence program. It will beam out MacArthur Park (the Richard Harris version of course) playing on a constant loop as a warning to all aliens. The signal will emanate from a Butinski placed at focus point of the mirror. The But is a space version developed by a team at Wichita State University.

 

[RayDunzl]

Is there or was there ever extra-terrestrial life?

I consider us to be a somewhat remarkable "proof of concept", so, why not?

 

[BDWoody]

And I love your curve--it serves as a humbling reminder of the need for infallibility in projects of this scope and complexity. Especially when so much at stake. The next 30 days will be very interesting times indeed.

Indeed.

The following months of calibration and testing will also be interesting to follow. I was reading that the adjustments made to focus the mirror segments are made at a rate slower than grass growing.

 

[PierreV]

The sunshield was fully deployed yesterday - looking very good so far!

Where Is Webb? NASA/Webb

During Webb's launch, deployment and commissioning, 'WhereIsWebb' tracked Webb's 'flight' to L2 orbit, its state and progress during its deployment and commissioning process, and finally the release of its first images. This process is now complete. During this process, the page constantly...

jwst.nasa.gov

 

[JRS]

Mission update: The secondary mirror (shiny coin) on the left side of the pic in my reply has been swung out and locked into place. Currently 2/3'rds the way to it's L2 destination. What I thought was cool is that the mission control have a Webb look-alike robot that has the same moving parts as the actual scope and mimics the movements on Earth as data is telemetered from the spacecraft.

The mock up is pictured in the left frame. Spoiler Alert: "Action" picks up at 48 minutes in.

 

[JRS]

Gives you some idea of the scale of the scope, along with the mass and length of actuation parts.

 

[nerdstrike]

It's normal for NASA to keep a spare "staging" copy of spacecraft for working through problems, trying software and practicing tricky things. Otherwise you have to simulate it, and that's no guarantee of accuracy.

They depict it in The Martian by dusting off one of the old Mars landers to work out how to communicate with Wattny. Some of the live copies end up in places like the Smithsonian once their mission has ended.

So far so good!