Another Jubilant Win for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope
The most powerful deep space telescope in the known universe just successfully unfurled its main mirror…in space.
On Saturday, January 8 2022, two weeks after NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope to great fanfare on Christmas Day, scientists at NASA HQ celebrated another rousing success for the Webb.
Once the new telescope reached a certain position, NASA scientists intended for it to finish unfurling its 21.3 foot primary mirror in space. Many orders of magnitude stronger than the Hubble Telescope launched in 1990, the James Webb was built to see further into the reaches of space than any human eye ever dreamed.
But only if that very complicated mirror-unfurling maneuver went off without a hitch. There would be no opportunities to fix Webb, should the delicate function fail.
The thousands of complex moving parts, engineered and assembled on Earth, were designed to withstand the extreme conditions of the launch process and space itself.
To say such a thing is a miracle of engineering and design is an understatement. That is worked is borderline miraculous and scientists are right to be excited. A million things that could have gone wrong in the reaches of space, far from any fixes, did not.
For this reason, scientists at NASA celebrated an incredible success on Saturday, as the last of the mirror’s moving parts rotated into place.
Unfolding the mirror in space was an unavoidable aspect of the space telescope. The mirror itself was much too delicate to withstand the rigors of being launched into space with the force of a nuclear explosion while fully unfurled.
Even so, the engineering problem is one of many NASA spent years working out. Other moving parts on the telescope were equally difficult to maneuver through the process of launch.
“With the conclusion of the year just days away, we are excited to announce #NASAWebb has cleared one of its most important testing milestones to date,” NASA updated on December 17, 2020. “Webb’s 5-layer sunshield has been successfully deployed and tensioned into the same configuration it will have once in space!”
“Engineers working on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have successfully folded and packed its sunshield for its upcoming million-mile (roughly 1.5 million kilometer) journey, which begins later this year,” NASA continued two months later, describing still more Herculean efforts to launch James Webb. “The sunshield — a five-layer, diamond-shaped structure the size of a tennis court — was specially engineered to fold up around the two sides of the telescope and fit within the confines of its launch vehicle, the Ariane 5 rocket.”
One major problem was the complex components of deep space infrared photography. Mirror and sensors must be maintained at extremely cold temperatures in order to function properly. The technology works by detecting very faint heat signals from very far away.
Prepping, testing, packing, prepping, and testing again, engineers and scientists worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to make certain Webb’s delicate internal workings survived a successful launch.
NASA kept the public update on the James Webb Space Telescope’s “Road to launch” as the months progressed. As the December 24, 2021 launch date approached, no stone was left unturned, untested or retested.
While the launch was postponed until December 25, it was in all other aspects a rousing success. As scientists celebrated, they did so with the knowledge that the unfurling into place of many movable parts might mean their efforts were all in vain.
With this major milestone surpassed, however, NASA can breathe a sigh of relief. The James Webb Space Telescope is soaring through the heavens, having so far exceeded every expectation and sparked every imagination at NASA and beyond.
(contributing writer, Brooke Bell)
Another Jubilant Win for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope