I'm liking this report from The Verge. It starts with a video of the Christmas Day launch from the Spaceport at the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.
My understanding is that this is supposed to be wildly more advanced than the Hubble... which is still a great telescope. I'm pretty excited by what we may be able to see in the near future with this guy... space is the one area where I think, for the most part... everyone comes together. It's the only area where we move forward as humanity, and that's awesome.
Side comment... if anyone here has never seen the "Very Large Array," I think it's worth the visit. It was one of the most memorable things I saw in New Mexico... and let me tell you, New Mexico is one of my favorite states. There's so much to see and do... from a natural standpoint, the place is amazing. Every 100 miles is like a completely different terrain.
Anyway, here's a picture of the Very Large Array if you guys have never seen it. It was featured in 2010 A Space Odyssey, and a few other movies. It's a "radio telescope."
JWST’s Precise Launch and Near-Perfect Course Corrections Mean Fuel Savings. And That Means a Longer Mission Nancy Atkinson for Universe Today; December 29, 2021. https://www.universetoday.c...ns-a-longer-mission/
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 12-30-2021).]
Absolutely hilarious......And, scarily, very possible. How the a-clowns messed up Hubble is beyond me......What is really bad about this new space telescope is that there is no way they can "go and fix it"...It's location makes that (Basically) impossible.
New video (2+ minutes) of the JWST after it separated from its launch vehicle and began the long journey to L2, about a million miles distant from Earth.
While the telescope is [now] considered fully deployed, much remains to be completed. There are still 49 of those [original 344] “single point failures,” according to Mr. Menzel. Problems with any of them could affect the mission’s individual instruments or the entire spacecraft.
By the end of January, the telescope will be in its final orbit at L2. The astronomers will spend the next five months tweaking the mirrors to bring them into common focus and beginning to test and calibrate their instruments.
Then real science will begin. Astronomers have said the first picture from the Webb telescope will appear in June, but of what nobody will say.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 01-08-2022).]
