James Webb Space Telescope Finally In Space! What's Next? FIRST IMAGES

 

NASA got a huge Christmas gift this morning when it successfully launched its most powerful space telescope ever eric sorenson explains how it could revolutionize astronomy and help us better understand the birth of the universe at 7 20 a.m eastern time on christmas morning 2021 the rockets fired and the ground shook spectators at guyana space center in kuru french guyana and the world over held their breath as the wildly ambitious james webb space telescope was launched if all goes well the culmination of decades of work and 10 billion dollars in investment will give humanity a much clearer picture of the origins of the universe and our place in it there are numerous milestones since our earliest ancestors looked skyward and wondered about the stars from the most primitive telescopes to sputnik 1 from yuri gagarin to neil armstrong certain days and events mark giant leaps in our progression with any luck at all in the coming months and years christmas morning 2021 will be right up there with these giant leaps welcome to fact nominal in today's article we time travel through nearly three decades of challenges and determination to see webb finally get off the ground and become the virtual time machine the scientific

 world has dreamed of for centuries

 many justifiably worried that this day would never come nearly anything that could conceivably happen too slow or completely derail web happened funding woes check missed engineering targets check project management issues check

 loose screws check and for good measure

 throw in a global pandemic so while any project of such incredible ambition is bound to bump into the unforeseen webb encountered an array of obstacles that borders on unbelievable the james webb telescope is unlike any observatory humanity has sent into space or will for quite a while size alone makes that distinction as the gold-plated multi-segmented mirror has a 6.5 meter 21.3 feet diameter almost twice the size of the european space agency's herschel telescope and four times the light gathering capability it's the first to orbit beyond the moon nearly 1.5 million kilometers or 1 million miles away at what is called the second lagrange point or l2 there the earth and the sun's gravity cancel out meaning webb can orbit the sun with earth at its back from its extremely sensitive array of unique instruments to the multi-layer sun shield that will make the shaded side 600 degrees fahrenheit cooler than the sun lit side webb is loaded with scientific first that required years of development and testing oh and did we mention it had to be launched tucked away inside a rocket before unfolding and calibrating itself in space with virtually zero chance of human intervention due to its positioning far beyond the moon's orbit the mirror and the sun shield are folded like space origami to fit into the rocket fairing so what went up christmas morning looks nothing like what will hopefully spend five years unraveling mysteries of our universe and the original launch was planned for 2007 only 14 years ago let's dig into the long trek to reach this historic point first just throw out the 2007 plan that was wildly ambitious and never a realistic outcome so nasa project management targeted 2014 by 2010 it was clear to all that 2014 was not feasible either mainly due to a severe lack of near-term resources available for the project an internal critical design review and an external independent comprehensive review panel reached that same conclusion webb survived a cancellation attempt in 2011 that if successful would have pushed any similar nasa projects decades down the road the u.s house appropriations committee proposed the project's termination as part of a larger effort to enact belt tightening measures at nasa and other federal science agencies this effort thankfully failed the initial estimate for webb was 5.1 billion dollars and 3.5 billion of that was already spent by the time of the reviews the late 2015 launch was possible but only if an extra 250 million was available in both 2011 and 2012 and the new project cost was 6.5 billion dollars those funds of course never materialized and many project workers were laid off

 this lost the brainpower and experience of those who had worked on web thus far and in turn delayed development of components the extra time now obviously needed added at least 1.5 billion dollars to the cost and while the gold-plated mirrors were completed and testing progressed well on many components other issues surfaced that caused even longer delays during vibration testing to simulate launch conditions screws loosened up and fell out this of course needed immediate attention leaky valves were detected during further tests and a simulation to unfurl the five-layer sun shield resulted in tearing the spacecraft element but still these hurdles were overcome and all four advanced instruments for gathering data were tested and re-tested in 2015 a launch date in october 2018 was targeted but issues discovered during integration and testing along with some human errors stalled the launch yet again an incorrect solvent was used to clean a fuel valve and someone applied the wrong voltage during a test the estimated cost now reached 9.7 billion dollars and the new launch target became march 2021 at this point it's important to state that in the early stages nasa and its contractors did not have realistic knowledge and estimates of what they were building also the project then known as the next generation space telescope was founded on what nasa's inspector general identified as a culture of optimism nasa aims high literally and otherwise an optimism is a driving component to do the things it sets out to do but that optimism leads to cost and time estimates that quickly become unrealistic due to the very nature of nasa's mission many key technologies for jwst did not even exist in the project's early days nasa engineers literally had to invent several new technologies before construction of the groundbreaking telescope could commence for perspective the hubble space telescope had an initial price tag of 200 million dollars far lower than the eventual 1.2 billion dollars that it cost to develop in june 2020 nasa announced that webb quote absolutely will not launch in march 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic necessitating switching to teleworking for many project members in quote march 2021 obviously did not become the launch date for webb in november nasa reported a sudden unplanned release of a clamp band that happened as technicians prepared to attach webb to the launch vehicle adapter this caused a vibration through the telescope which of course had to be tested to ensure nothing was damaged december saw no less than three delays including a faulty cable that bumped the launch to christmas eve and then christmas morning due to weather but now finally webb is in space and headed to l2 mission accomplished not exactly to be crystal clear every single person involved in the james webb space telescope project has a nerve racking six months ahead the first month on the way to l2 has been called by nasa 29 days on the edge for all the carefully choreographed deployments that must be successful for jwst to work so this historic launch is really the beginning months on end of practice now must translate to the real thing engineers will initiate and monitor over 300 unique steps involving 178 mechanisms and 50 major deployments redundant systems and backup plans are built in because every one of those mechanisms must work for jwst to function the first 24 hours involve automatic deployments culminating with web's high gain antenna positioning itself to point back to earth after three days in space jwst will begin deploying its five-layer tennis court size sun shield and on day four webb's mirrors are raised two meters to have room to deploy fully and cool properly by day eight the tensioning process for each sun shield layer should be complete day 10 is crucial the secondary mirror swings to its operational position in front of the primary mirror and any component failure could mean no images to earth the primary mirror begins the unfolding process on day 12 and for two days the wings will fold out and lock into place full deployment of the 21 foot diameter

 mirror is another giant step for webb's

 mission to be successful this is followed by 10 days of crucial adjustments of each gold-plated primary mirror segment all

 18 of them and the secondary mirror

 then on day 29 the third and last course correction burn puts webb into orbit at l2 extremely critical now what are we ready to peer into the depths of the universe not even close the party awaiting mission engineers and scientists once the james webb space telescope reaches l2 is extremely painstaking it's three months of careful alignment of the 13 hexagonal mirrors this very delicate process brings all 18 separate images into one phenomenally clear picture it will be four months from launch before the telescope is fully aligned and all instruments focused and for them to work properly the temperature must drop to minus 233 degrees celsius that's -388 degrees fahrenheit at this temperature infrared background noise is suppressed

 so are we there yet nope each of the four instruments on board the mid-infrared instrument the near-infrared camera the near-infrared imager and slitless spectrograph fine guidance sensor and the near-infrared spectrograph must be calibrated and tested in each of its many operational models this sequence lasts over two months and then by late june if every single thing works properly or perhaps later in the summer if it doesn't we will begin our unprecedented search into the farthest reaches of space and time and peer into the beginning of our universe it's been an incredibly long wait with

 footfalls and obstacles never imagined

 in its embryonic stages but the James Webb space telescope will surely increase our understanding of the universe and our

 place in it in ways we cannot imagine

 so what do you think about this epic effort by science and engineering to explore everything from the origins of the universe itself to our cosmic neighborhood will you be on the edge of your seat for the next six months tell us in the comments