James Webb Space Telescope Just Completed Its Initial Pre-Flight Testing

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just completed its first pre-flight test, marking a milestone on its way to successful launching. If everything goes according to schedule, the telescope will be launched by October 31, 2021, from the Guiana Space Centre on an Ariane 5 rocket.

The development of the new telescope is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Agency (CSA), who all contributed to financing, designing, and building the telescope. The JWST is the most complex telescope ever built with features such as the Fine Guidance Sensor, which will help focus on targets, and the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph for viewing distant cosmic bodies such as other galaxies and exoplanets.

Initial Testing

The initial testing also marked the telescope's first-time commands as the three agencies powered up and tested all of JWST's scientific instruments. The commands were issued from the Mission Operations Center at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, where they will also be issued from during the mission next year. The JWST will then receive the commands via Deep Space Network (DSN) of communication dishes located in the United States, Australia, and Spain during the mission.

DSN dishes were not used in the initial testing because they can only communicate with objects in space, so instead, a DSN network emulator was used. Using the emulator is a standard procedure for upcoming missions that will, later on, use the DSN dishes.

All four primary instruments proved to function as designed, passing the requirements of the evaluation. Also, the telescope not only received and executed commands but was able to downlink data back to the ground as well.

Amanda Arvai of the Mission Operations at the Space Telescope Science Institute said, 'This was the first time we have done this with both the actual Webb flight hardware and ground system.' They've previously performed parts of the test before the observatory was fully assembled, 'but this is the first-ever and fully successful, end-to-end operation of the observatory and ground segment.'

The evaluation was completed within four days from the Space Telescope Science Institute as well as in a facility at Northrop Grumman's Redondo Beach where the JWST will be fully assembled. Aravi added that this was also the first time that the Flight Operations Team 'demonstrated the complete cycle for conducting observations with the observatory's science instruments' from creating an observation plan to uplinking to the observatory.

Another part of the testing was acoustic testing, mimicking the sound and acoustic waves the telescope will encounter during the launch. Acoustic testing is another critical test that satellites need to pass, ensuring that all parts of the telescope can survive the impact.

James Webb's Mission

If the launch is successful next October, the James Webb's mission is to travel to the L2 Lagrange point, nearly one million miles away from Earth. The Lagrange point contains a region where two celestial bodies cancel out each other's gravity, making it a stable platform for James Webb to land.

Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, the JWST was designed to work well on both the ground and in space. Also, the JWST will take better and clearer images than the Hubble.

Dr. Eric Smith from NASA said, 'This is the period when we ready the observatory for operations in space and has many critical events, but also long periods of waiting for conditions on the observatory (like temperature) to be just right before we can do anything. We're working hard on how this will go, but it gets overshadowed by the great images of the observatory itself.'

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