NASA Builds A Time-Machine Telescope 100 Times As Powerful As The Hubble

MSN.com ^ | 18 November 2014 | Eric Niler

[zeestephen]

Inside a very big and very clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., nearly 30 workers dressed in white protective suits, goggles and blue booties cluster around the parts of a time machine. These parts — gold-covered mirrors, tennis-court-size sun shields, delicate infrared cameras — are slowly being put together to become the James Webb Space Telescope.

[Moonman62]

2014 - $8.8 billion

A lot of things have to go right with the launch and deployment. There will be no rescue missions either.

[KoRn]

It would be SO NICE to read a NASA thread where people don’t dwell on about the “Muslim outreach” nonsense.

I know it’s stupid PC crap, but on EVERY thread, year after year, it just becomes a bunch of noise. We ALL know about it, and repeatedly posting about it accomplishes nothing. A point is reached where there’s no effect, and it’s just tiresome....

This telescope SHOULD be AMAZING! I just hope it gets off to a better start than Hubble did. lol

[Safrguns]

LOL!... hope nothing goes wrong with it... cause all of our shuttles have been decommissioned... no more American space flights!

What a waste

[InterceptPoint]

Interesting article. This caught my eye:

“The Webb will be both bigger and located in a darker part of space than Hubble, enabling it to capture images from the faintest galaxies.”

Just how do you find “a darker part of space”?

[GreenHornet]

When launched it will combine with the Hubble telescope to become the Webb Hubble orbital observatory. Chelsea Clinton will be on hand to press the launch button.

Now that's funny, I don't care who you are, that's funny right there!

[HandyDandy]

I remember when they had to use the shuttle to go up and do repairs to the the Hubble. I seem to also recall that the main mirror of the Hubble was actually ground convex instead of concave (or visa versa)!! I think they replaced cameras on it too.

[dragnet2]

hope nothing goes wrong with it... cause all of our shuttles have been decommissioned... no more American space flights!

The shuttle missions circled the earth about 21,000 times, round and around...It basically then turned into a supply and pizza delivery service for ISS.

Unmanned spacecraft and scopes like James Webb have and will takes us way further.

Without some earth shattering discovery which would allow man to travel light speed or 100x light speed, wormhole travel etc, man will likely never even leave our tiny solar system let alone travel within or beyond our own galaxy. Could happen, but not for centuries at best.

Scopes like Jame Webb will discover things way beyond what manned spaceflight is even capable of now or anytime in the distant future. Unmanned craft have already gone where man cannot due to extreme conditions.

Due to physics/distances etc, it's just the way it is.

[zeestephen]

It will be put in a Lagrangian point orbit called “L2,” which is about 1 million miles from Earth

I think there are 5 total Earth-Sun Lagrangian points.

L2 is a point in space where the gravitational pull from the Earth and Sun combine to keep a satellite almost in exactly the same place.

The satellite actually orbits the L2 point.

But the result is that it tracks the Earth almost exactly as they both orbit the Sun.

The satellite will have its “back” to the sun, Earth and Moon with a huge amount insulation between.

Even the sun light reflected off the Earth and Moon has enough “heat” to disable the telescope, which must be chilled close to absolute zero, as I recall.

[EternalVigilance]

Yeah. If memory serves they had to give Hubble glasses.

[Rides_A_Red_Horse]

I thought the assembly instructions were very badly translated Chinese.

---

I saw instructions for changing the batteries in a Japanese manufactured Guitar Effect Pedal -

“Turn device over. Locate three F**ks on bottom. Remove three F**ks.”

I assume someone at the factory asked an American friend from the local military base for another word for “screw.”

[Radix]

The workers there are better protected than health care workers for an ebola patient.

[dragnet2]

As the JWST must be kept very cold to make accurate observations of distant astronomical objects, it has been designed with a large sunshield that blocks light and heat from the Sun. In order for such a shield to work properly, the Sun's rays must be constantly coming from the same direction. To achieve this outcome, JWST will be put into a relatively large "halo orbit" around L2. From the L2 point, the Earth constantly shades one third of the Sun's light as it periodically wobbles about the Earth-Moon barycenter; occasionally lunar eclipses will partially obscure more of the solar disk. However, the radius of the telescope's orbit around L2 will be so large that neither the Earth nor Moon will eclipse the Sun, allowing the shield to deal with a relatively constant sunlight environment. This was considered to be more important than attempting to utilize the Earth's shadow to block some of the sunlight, in an orbit nearer the exact L2 point.[citation needed] JWST's sunshield, made of polyimide film, has membranes coated with aluminum on one side and silicon on the other.

The sunshield is designed to be folded twelve times so it will fit within the Ariane 5 rocket's 4.57 m × 16.19 m shroud. Once deployed at the L2 point, it will unfold to 12.2 m × 18 m. The sunshield was hand-assembled at Man Tech (NeXolve) in Huntsville, Alabama before it was delivered to Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California for testing.

[biff]

“Hey Joe, who ground this lens.”
/s

[Safrguns]

>>> Unmanned spacecraft and scopes like James Webb have and will takes us way further.

Oh... so its not an orbital scope like hubble?

That makes sense.

Still a big gamble... just one little rock on an intercept course at even the lowest of average space object velocities means game over.

[TigersEye]

Just how do you find “a darker part of space”?

It's just opposite of a whiter shade of pale.

[Drew68]

It would be SO NICE to read a NASA thread where people don’t dwell on about the “Muslim outreach” nonsense.

I don't even know why people post science threads on Free Republic. They devolve quickly and generate practically no intellectual discussion on the subject.

And, yep, I think this telescope should be amazing as well!

[ROCKLOBSTER]

“Hey Joe, who ground this lens.”

Did you hear the one about the optician who fell into his lens grinding machine?

He made a spectacle of himself.

[Poison Pill]

When launched it will combine with the Hubble telescope to become the Webb Hubble orbital observatory. Chelsea Clinton will be on hand to press the launch button.

I was scrolling down just praying nobody else had made that joke yet.

I tip my hat

[Nowhere Man]

I work in a department store and saw a muzzie woman decked out in a full lack burka and I only saw her eyes. I joked to myself in my mind, “well at least she’s dressed for the 15 degree cold we have here.” B-P

[KoRn]

"I don't even know why people post science threads on Free Republic. They devolve quickly and generate practically no intellectual discussion on the subject."

That's the truth. On a typical thread, you'll have a handful of serious/interesting replies, and 100 others that are elementary school level nonsense. (not to mention some of the religious people that seem to feel insecure about them for whatever reason)