Where Is Webb? - James Webb Space Telescope

Goddard Space Flight Center ^ | 26 December 2021

[zeestephen]

Real time Dashboard that includes mileage, speed, and temperature (will turn on Day 2), and a visual daily time line for every major deployment before reaching L-2. Also, click on the page title for access to an entire website for James Webb Telescope information and visuals.

[SES1066]

Thank you, I’ll be monitoring this. Fingers crossed, thee is still a lot that has to go well to win this prize!

[ComputerGuy]

I don't know who said this:

Curiosity is a sign of an active intelligence

[Artemis Webb]

Thanks for posting this.

[outofsalt]

Lots of interesting Webb info here,
https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html

[RandallFlagg]

Bookmarking

[zeestephen]

Your link actually goes to the same website that the Dashboard is on.

However, after noodling around for 10 minutes, I cannot figure out how to get from the Orbit link to the Dashboard link.

[JPG]

I am in awe of the brainpower that goes into figuring all this out.

[LeoWindhorse]

Thanks, this is cool

[outofsalt]

Good thing we’re not driving the telescope;)

[Nateman]

The first actual pictures won’t happen until July, if everything goes well. At least it’s in space now and the delays on the ground are at an end .

[martin_fierro]

And in case anyone was wondering…

[Paal Gulli]

Here's a good explanation of what an orbit around the second LaGrange point looks like, and (indirectly) why fears that Webb might be used to spy against earth are misguided.

[markman46]

try this link

https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

[zeestephen]

Thanks for the link.

Until a couple weeks ago, I thought satellites just kind of bobbed up and down in Lagrange points, essentially fixed in place by their inertial momentum and by the competing gravitational pull of sun, Earth, and moon.

Until watching this, I did not understand what kind of orbit it would be in relative to Earth - polar or equatorial.

Amazing - much more complex and beautiful than I imagined.

If it all comes together and works, it will be the most amazing technological accomplishment in human history.

The idea that we may be able to see the first light after the Big Bang is almost incomprehensible.

I still do not conceptually understand how we are able to see light from a specific moment in time by looking deeper and deeper into space.

In my mind, 99.9% of all the light ever created has either already passed by Earth's current location, or is still traveling towards Earth's future location.

In my mind, every star we can see needed to be at an exact location relative to the speed and motion of that star and Earth, and relative to the expansion of the universe.

I have given up trying to understand it.

[minnesota_bound]

Bad news....

[zeestephen]

Re: Try this link

It is the same link I posted at the top of the page.

Another reader sent me a page about Webb's L2 orbit that came from this same website, but I could not find the orbit page from the dashboard, or even from the title page of the website.

[doorgunner69]

Cool animation at the NASA site.
Did not realize they deployment had already started.

[markman46]

Oh ok, I don’t believe there is an orbit per say, once it gets to the L2 point it stays there. Far enough out 93,000 miles from earth to orbit around the sun.

[zeestephen]

It actually orbits the L2 point.

I have seen two illustrations - relative to Earth, one polar orbit, and one equatorial orbit.

The polar orbit makes the most sense - always facing away from the sun.

An equatorial orbit would require constant fuel use to keep the sun behind it.