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To: Steely Tom

It will still be several months before we get any pictures.


4 posted on 01/15/2022 7:50:01 PM PST by Blood of Tyrants (Do we value what the Founding Fathers gave us enough to fight for it?)
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To: Blood of Tyrants
It will still be several months before we get any pictures.

Yeah, the commissioning process is very slow. One reason is that a lot of compromises were made in the design to save weight and power while still achieving the requisite precision. Some of these compromises result in very slow movement of telescope parts away from their safe "launch positions." Also every step of the deployment and commissioning process is done with the most extreme degree of caution, cross-checking, and verification that everything is as it should be.

Understandable under the circumstances. They traded speed for weight savings. Also the orbital trajectory is interesting. It's like rolling a bowling ball up a miles-high, smooth mountain, with exactly the right direction and velocity to bring it to a dead stop exactly at the summit. They do get a couple of corrective rocket burns on the way, but they want to keep the amount of fuel burned for these to an absolute minimum.

9 posted on 01/15/2022 8:04:30 PM PST by Steely Tom ([Voter Fraud] == [Civil War])
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