The NASA James Webb Space Telescope reached a crucial milestone this week when it completed the deployment of its massive sunshield. This critical component will allow the floating space observatory to view the furthest regions of the cosmos.
As they finished calibrating the final layer of the tennis-court-sized sunshield shortly before noon on Tuesday, team members in Mission Operations Control at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore clapped and celebrated beneath face masks.
According to NASA's JWST Webb program director Gregory L. Robinson, the unfolding of Webb's sunshield in orbit is an outstanding milestone that is critical to the mission's success.
In a statement, Robinson said thousands of elements had to work together in perfect harmony for this engineering masterpiece to fully unfold. With the intricacy of this deployment, the team has completed an incredible achievement - one of Webb's most daring endeavors ever.
A woman stands near a model of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, on April 2, 2015.
James Webb Space Telescope Finally Unfolds 5-Layer Sunshield
Space.com said that the James Webb Space Telescope has successfully unfolded all five layers of its giant sunshield. According to experts, this was the most nerve-wracking element of its dangerous deployment.
The complicated procedure, which involved meticulous tensioning of each of the five hair-thin layers of the intricate sunshield structure, went off without a hitch on Jan. 4. Its completion offered a sigh of relief to the hundreds of engineers who had worked on the project for three decades, as well as the numerous scientists throughout the world who had been waiting for Webb's revolutionary findings.
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A complicated system of wires and motors tugging at the diamond-shaped sunshield's corners was used today to secure the appropriate tension for each of the sunshield's five layers.
The sunshield's diamond-shaped layers were meticulously tightened on Jan. 3. NASA expected each layer to take one day to tension. Still, three layers were successfully tensioned before the end of the first day, with the remaining two layers tightened on Tuesday at 11:59 a.m. ET.
What's Next For JWST?
Webb is projected to reach its target orbit a million miles from Earth in approximately 29 days, with additional key stages along the road, including another major obstacle later this week: unfolding the telescope's mirror.
The mirror may stretch to a gigantic length of 6.5 meters, allowing it to catch more light from objects once the telescope is in space. The telescope can see more details if the mirror collects more light.
CNN said it's the biggest mirror NASA has ever constructed, but its size posed a unique challenge. The mirror could not fit in the rocket because it was too huge. Engineers created the telescope as a set of movable pieces that can fold up like origami and fit into a 5-meter (16-foot) launch slot.
The mirror's 18 hexagonal gold-coated segments must unfurl and lock together in Webb's following sequence of critical processes. All of these tasks should be accomplished by the end of this week. Finally, Webb will alter its course further to place itself in orbit extending beyond the moon.
While that completes the 29-day countdown, the telescope will undergo a five-and-a-half-month phase of commissioning in orbit, which includes cooling down, aligning, and calibrating its equipment. All equipment will also get a checkup to ensure that they are in good working order.
Later in 2022, Webb will begin collecting data and producing its first photos, which will be revealed in June or July 2023, permanently transforming the way we see and comprehend the cosmos.
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