Posted on 12/24/2021 10:34:14 PM PST by Libloather
NASA and its international partners are counting down to a Christmas Day launch of the most expensive science probe ever built, a $10 billion telescope designed to capture starlight from the first galaxies born in the fiery crucible of the Big Bang.
Billions over budget and years behind schedule, the James Webb Space Telescope is targeted for blastoff from the European Space Agency's Kourou, French Guiana, launch site at 7:20 a.m. EST Saturday atop an Ariane 5 rocket, weather permitting.
Equipped with two solid-fuel strap-on boosters, the workhorse rocket will propel Webb away from the northeast coast of South America on an easterly trajectory, releasing the telescope to fly on its own about 27 minutes after liftoff.
Still folded up to fit inside the Ariane 5's nose cone, the observatory's single solar panel, critical for recharging the spacecraft's batteries, is scheduled to unfold about six minutes after separation, the first in a series of major milestones.
Webb will need a month to reach its planned parking place a million miles from Earth on the far side of the moon's orbit - known as Lagrange Point 2 - where it can circle the sun in gravitational lockstep with Earth, providing the cold, dark environment needed for mission success.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Here Are the Differences Between Hubble and the Powerful New James Webb Space Telescope
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Will Have ‘Tremendous Impact’ on Search for Alien Life
https://www.newsweek.com/james-webb-space-telescope-tremendous-impact-search-alien-life-1662887
How the James Webb telescope will get into space
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-59785417
Cross your antennae and hope all those crucial unfolding steps go nominally.
bttt
book marked
“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Will Have ‘Tremendous Impact’ on Search for Alien Life”
on Uranus....
sorry... somebody had to do it....
Am I the only person who when they read James Webb telescope immediately thought if the Hubble telescope and thus Webb Hubble and Fort Marcy Park which brought it back to HILLARY!
I am currently wearing a t-shirt that had Bill and Hillary dressed as assassins with the caption “The Clinton’s, They Can’t Suicide us All!”
No, but I thought of the other James Webb, the former Virginia senator who wrote pornography on the side (a Democrat, of course).
2:20
It is taking off from the port of departure for the infamous Devil’s Island.
Live coverage began at 6am.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/live-coverage-of-the-james-webb-space-telescope-mission
Who is James Webb?
James E. Webb ran the fledgling space agency from February 1961 to October 1968. He believed that NASA had to strike a balance between human space flight and science.
https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/faqs/whoIsJamesWebb.html
So far so good. It is now in space. The project started in 1996 and was supposed to have launched in 2007 . Getting men to the moon apparently was easier .
Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, former Senator from Florida, is almost 80 years old.
He rambled - haltingly - for about 5 minutes and said nothing of consequence.
He is as cognitively impaired as Joe Biden - or worse!
That’s just about the time I moved on.
Interesting info on the L2 (Lagrange Point) station where the telescope is headed. L2 is 1M miles from Earth and will take the telescope some 30 days to reach.
Because the telescope operates on infrared signals, it requires extensive shielding from light sources. Operational temperature is -370 F.
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html
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