Five days after its successful space flight, JWST is en route to its destination in Lagrange point L2
. Its deployment has started, with stages that are each just as critical as the next.
So far, everything is going well, and the installation of the enormous “sun visor” has started. Fingers crossed to make it last!
Stressful origami
Daily news of the deployment of the James Webb telescope. The stages follow one another as the JWST moves away from Earth: already 630,000 kilometers on December 30, five days after takeoff. During the live, much of the audience had already seen the six-meter-long solar panel of the large telescope open and unfold correctly.
Since then, the great gem of astronomical observation has deployed its high-speed antenna, then refined its trajectory twice towards its objective, the Lagrange L2 point, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. NASA took the opportunity to calculate with the greatest possible precision its fuel consumption and announced yesterday that thanks to the exceptional orbit injection carried out by Ariane 5 and to exact maneuvers, the operational life of the telescope would undoubtedly exceed ten years. A boon for dozens of scientific teams around the world and for knowledge about our universe!
A luxury parasol
Since December 28, it is the sequence of deployment of the sun visor, the enormous heat shield of the JWST (which will eventually make the surface of a tennis court) which began. Both front and rear supports have been successfully tilted into their final position, and the DTA mast (Deployable Tower Assembly) stretched out yesterday, lifting the set with mirrors and scientific instruments above the sun visor.
These are three very good news, because a problem on one of these stages would have doomed the whole mission. Today, a small rear flap will be unfolded and put in place. This is a plate that balances the telescope and relieves stress on the lens hood. The maintenance of the thermal blanket will also be detached, with a view to extending the left and right masts during the day tomorrow. No room for error!
No vacation for the JWST team
In four days, if all goes well, the adventure of the sun visor will be over… It will then be the turn of the JWST mirrors to begin their great unfolding. This new series of steps is essential, because every day the telescope gets closer to its objective. Hopefully, for all the teams involved, the years of preparation will have succeeded in countering the effects of Murphy’s Law …
Source:
NASA
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