NASA now targets December 18, 2021 for launch of Webb
NASA today announced that it and the European Space Agency have scheduled the Ariane 5 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana for December 18, 2021.
The agency set the new target launch date in coordination with Arianespace after Webb recently and successfully completed its rigorous testing regimen – a major turning point for the mission. The new date also follows Arianespace successfully launching an Ariane 5 rocket in late July and scheduling a launch that will precede Webb. The July launch was the first for an Ariane 5 since August 2020.
Launching before the end of ’21 will allow NASA to claim that Webb is only be ten years behind schedule, not eleven. The cost overruns however remain astronomical (no pun intended). Initially budgeted at $500 million, Webb is now estimated to have cost $10 billion.
Once launched the telescope will take about six months to slowly move to its Lagrange point location about a million miles from the Earth, in the Earth’s shadow. During that time it will also be steadily deploying its many segmented mirror for infrared observations (an important detail as Webb is not a replacement for Hubble, which does most of its observations in the optical wavelengths).
Should deployment and placement go as planned, Webb will undoubtedly do ground-breaking astronomy, especially in the field of deep space cosmology. If anything should go wrong, any repair mission will take at a minimum five years to mount, if ever.
Keep those fingers and toes crossed!
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
NASA today announced that it and the European Space Agency have scheduled the Ariane 5 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana for December 18, 2021.
The agency set the new target launch date in coordination with Arianespace after Webb recently and successfully completed its rigorous testing regimen – a major turning point for the mission. The new date also follows Arianespace successfully launching an Ariane 5 rocket in late July and scheduling a launch that will precede Webb. The July launch was the first for an Ariane 5 since August 2020.
Launching before the end of ’21 will allow NASA to claim that Webb is only be ten years behind schedule, not eleven. The cost overruns however remain astronomical (no pun intended). Initially budgeted at $500 million, Webb is now estimated to have cost $10 billion.
Once launched the telescope will take about six months to slowly move to its Lagrange point location about a million miles from the Earth, in the Earth’s shadow. During that time it will also be steadily deploying its many segmented mirror for infrared observations (an important detail as Webb is not a replacement for Hubble, which does most of its observations in the optical wavelengths).
Should deployment and placement go as planned, Webb will undoubtedly do ground-breaking astronomy, especially in the field of deep space cosmology. If anything should go wrong, any repair mission will take at a minimum five years to mount, if ever.
Keep those fingers and toes crossed!
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“… its L5 location …”
It’s not L5; I think it’s Earth-Sun L2.
Call Me Ishmael: You are correct. I meant to write Lagrange point. Now fixed.
Wow! What a major win for the government-industrial complex! They turned a measly half-billon dollar science project into a $10 billion bonanza! What financial wizards these folks are, just think of the money they will make on the next project, which will be to FIX the thing when it fails!
“slowly move to its Lagrange point location about a million miles from the Earth, in the Earth’s shadow”
That would make sense, because it needs to be super cooled to function properly. But that’s not its design, I was disappointed to find out It will be powered by solar cells, not a plutonium battery.
It will circle earth’s shadow staying in sunlight.
That means its lifespan is limited to the amount of coolant it takes with it.
It must make adjustments to maintain the circular orbit around the shadow that has the diameter equal to the moons orbit around the earth.
With a large heat shield in place to prevent solar heating of the telescope, there’s a danger of solar wind causing frequent adjustments.
Max wrote: “That means its lifespan is limited to the amount of coolant it takes with it.”
It has a sunshade, which caused one of the brief delays. No coolant on this telescope.
Yes, it will circle L2 to remain in the sunlight for power. Interestingly, though, even an object exactly at L2 would not be in the full Earth’s shadow–only about 95%. Looking sunward from L2, it’s an annular eclipse.