James Webb IR telescope successfully launched

Diesel said:
You know Jesus is a giant bottom, right? Only dude I've ever known who can take two dicks in his mouth and two dicks in his ass at the same time. In the name of the Daddy, his Twink, and whatever Drag Queen is performing tonight.
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That might have been true ... until MoonPie showed up.
 
McRocket said:
Not applicable as NASA was still going.
So the public depended on the government for ALL space exploration.

If NASA had died?
The public would have realized that the only way to explore space was the private sector.
And - like now - lots of companies would have sprung up in their place.

It would have cost taxpayers NOTHING.
And I bet you Americans would be on the Moon now, headed for Mars and a lot less astronauts would have died than thanks to that ridiculous, fucking GO FEVER that infected NASA and got 17 of them killed.

Hell, during the Columbia disaster?
The head honcho of the mission - Linda Ham - basically just wrote off the crew.
She thought they might return safely.
But she knew the shuttle could be doomed.
And she did not even try to see a) how bad the damage was - which she could have done - but refused to authorize it.
Or b) even consider a rescue mission as it would effect the schedule too much.
She just treated the astronauts as test pilots who knew the dangers and were expendable (paraphrased).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Ham

Most people think that government-run organizations are safer.
That is 100% FALSE.
Bureaucrats have guaranteed jobs.
It is almost impossible to fire one.
And the government is under no pressure over safety as it is the only game in town.

But private, for-profit companies MUST be VERY safe.
Because if a disaster happens?
That could be the end of the company and everyone's jobs.
So they HAVE to be safe.

Those 17 astronauts ALL died due to GO FEVER.
That NEVER would have happened in the private sector.
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Where are you from/Where do you live?
 
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Mid Course Correction Burn 1b

Nominal Event Time: Launch + 2 days

This burn fine-tunes Webb's trajectory after launch. The duration of the burn will depend on Ariane 5 launcher performance.

There are three mid-course correction (MCC) maneuvers: MCC-1a, MCC-1b, and MCC-2. This is the second. The first burn, MCC-1a, is the most important and the only other time-critical operation aside from solar array deployment during Webb’s commissioning period.

The second, MCC-1b, is a shorter burn performed before the sunshield deployment is scheduled to start. The final maneuver, MCC-2, performed 29 days after launch, is designed to insert Webb into the optimum orbit around L2.
 
Primavera said:
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Mid Course Correction Burn 1b

Nominal Event Time: Launch + 2 days

This burn fine-tunes Webb's trajectory after launch. The duration of the burn will depend on Ariane 5 launcher performance.

There are three mid-course correction (MCC) maneuvers: MCC-1a, MCC-1b, and MCC-2. This is the second. The first burn, MCC-1a, is the most important and the only other time-critical operation aside from solar array deployment during Webb’s commissioning period.

The second, MCC-1b, is a shorter burn performed before the sunshield deployment is scheduled to start. The final maneuver, MCC-2, performed 29 days after launch, is designed to insert Webb into the optimum orbit around L2.
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When you ask an astronomer about the James Webb Space Telescope's orbit, they'll tell you something that sounds like it came from a science-fiction novel. The Webb won't be orbiting the Earth –instead we will send it almost a million miles out into space to a place called "L2."

L2 is short-hand for the second Lagrange Point, a wonderful accident of gravity and orbital mechanics, and the perfect place to park the Webb telescope in space. There are five so-called "Lagrange Points" - areas where gravity from the sun and Earth balance the orbital motion of a satellite. Putting a spacecraft at any of these points allows it to stay in a fixed position relative to the Earth and sun with a minimal amount of energy needed for course correction.

The term L2 may sound futuristic and mysterious, but the name actually honors a Mathematician born in 1736. The Lagrange points were named after the Italian-born mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange, who made important contributions to classical and celestial mechanics. Lagrange studied the "three-body problem" (so-called because three bodies are orbiting each other) for the Earth, sun, and moon in 1764, and by 1772 he had found the solution; there are five stable points at which you could put an object and have it stay fixed in place relative to the other two.

In the case of L2, this happens about 930,000 miles away from the Earth in the exact opposite direction from the sun. The Earth, as we know, orbits the sun once every year. Normally, an object almost a million miles farther out from the sun should move more slowly, taking more than a year to complete its orbit around the sun. However, at L2, exactly lined up with both the sun and Earth, the added gravity of the two large bodies pulling in the same direction gives a spacecraft an extra boost of energy, locking it into perfect unison with the Earth's yearly orbit. The Webb telescope will be placed slightly off the true balance point, in a gentle orbit around L2.

Why send the Webb telescope all the way out to L2? When astronomers began to think about where the Webb telescope should be placed in space, there were several considerations to keep in mind. To begin with, the Webb telescope will view the universe entirely in infrared light, what we commonly think of as heat radiation. To give the telescope the best chance of detecting distant, dim objects in space, the coldest temperatures possible are needed.

"A huge advantage of deep space (like L2) when compared to Earth orbit is that we can radiate the heat away," said Jonathan P. Gardner, the Deputy Senior Project Scientist on the Webb Telescope mission and Chief of the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Webb works in the infrared, which is heat radiation. To see the infrared light from distant stars and galaxies, the telescope has to be cold. Webb's large sunshield will protect it from both Sunlight and Earthlight, allowing it to cool to 225 degrees below zero Celsius (minus 370 Fahrenheit)." For the sunshield to be effective, Webb will need to be an orbit where the sun and Earth are in about the same direction.

With the sun and the Earth in the same part of the sky, the Webb telescope will enjoy an open, unimpeded view of the universe. In comparison, the Hubble Space Telescope is in low-Earth orbit where it goes in and out of the Earth's shadow every 90 minutes. Hubble's view is blocked by the Earth for part of each orbit, limiting where the telescope can look at any given time.

The Spitzer Space Telescope, another infrared telescope, is in orbit around the sun and drifting away from the Earth. Spitzer is already more than 100 million kilometers (60 million miles) away from the Earth, and eventually its path will take it to the other side of the sun. Once we can no longer communicate with Spitzer that means it is at the end of its mission life.

This animation shows the Webb Telescope spacecraft orbiting far from the Earth. Credit: NASA/Chris Meaney (HTSI)In contrast, a major perk of parking at L2 is the ease of communications. Essentially, the Webb telescope will always be at the same point in space. "We can have continuous communications with Webb through the Deep Space Network (DSN)," Gardner said. "During routine operations, we will uplink command sequences and downlink data up to twice per day, through the DSN. The observatory can perform a sequence of commands (pointing and observations) autonomously. Typically, we will upload a full week's worth of commands at a time, and make updates daily as needed."

Even before the Webb telescope, L2 has been known to astronomers as a good spot for space-based observatories. There are already several satellites in the L2 orbit, including the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, and the Herschel and Planck space observatories. But there's plenty of room for another neighbor, and the Webb telescope will be heading out to L2 in the near future.

The Webb telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/webb-l2.html
 
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Primavera said:
The Webb telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/webb-l2.html
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NASA is awesome. The great men and women who both put mankind on the Moon and continue to document climate change.

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
In Brief:
Direct observations made on and above Earth’s surface show the planet’s climate is significantly changing. Human activities are the primary driver of those changes.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
On a slight different angle I am remembering how the European Philae probe was almost completely useless because they had it powered with solar when it needed to be powered with nuclear. They were afraid to launch a nuclear probe in case it did not escape Earth, so they sacrificed the mission as it turned out.
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You are incorrect, whilst the mission was not a complete success, due to the failure of the reverse thruster prior to landing and the anchoring grabs not deploying much was achieved regardless.

On 12 November 2014, Philae touched down on the comet, but it bounced when its anchoring harpoons failed to deploy and a thruster designed to hold the probe to the surface did not fire.[SUP][13][/SUP] After bouncing off the surface twice, Philae achieved the first-ever "soft" (nondestructive) landing on a comet nucleus,[SUP][14][/SUP][SUP][15][/SUP][SUP][16][/SUP] although the lander's final, uncontrolled touchdown left it in a non-optimal location and orientation.[SUP][17]
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Despite the landing problems, the probe's instruments obtained the first images from a comet's surface.[SUP][18][/SUP] Several of the instruments on Philae made the first direct analysis of a comet, sending back data that would be analysed to determine the composition of the surface.[SUP][19][/SUP] In October 2020, scientific journal Nature published an article which revealed what it was determined Philae had discovered while it was operational on the surface of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.[SUP][20]
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On 15 November 2014 Philae entered safe mode, or hibernation, after its batteries ran down due to reduced sunlight and an off-nominal spacecraft orientation at the crash site. Mission controllers hoped that additional sunlight on the solar panels might be sufficient to reboot the lander.[SUP][21][/SUP] Philae communicated sporadically with Rosetta from 13 June to 9 July 2015,[SUP][22][/SUP][SUP][23][/SUP][SUP][24][/SUP] but contact was then lost. The lander's location was known to within a few tens of metres but it could not be seen. Its location was finally identified in photographs taken by Rosetta on 2 September 2016 as the orbiter was sent on orbits closer to the comet. The now-silent Philae was lying on its side in a deep crack in the shadow of a cliff. Knowledge of its location would help in interpretation of the images it had sent.[SUP][4][/SUP][SUP][25][/SUP] On 30 September 2016, the Rosetta spacecraft ended its mission by crashing in the comet's Ma'at region.[SUP][26]
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The lander is named after the Philae obelisk, which bears a bilingual inscription and was used along with the Rosetta Stone to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. Philae was monitored and operated from DLR's Lander Control Center in Cologne, Germany.[SUP][27][/SUP]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_(spacecraft)
 
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Current Deployment Step

Aft Sunshield Pallet

The Aft Unitized Pallet Structure (UPS)
Nominal Event Time: Launch + 3 days


The UPS supports and carries the five folded sunshield membranes. Prior to this, the spacecraft will have been maneuvered to provide warmer temperatures on the forward UPS and various heaters have been activitated to warm key deployment components. Key release devices have been activated. Various electronics and software have also been configured prior to support the UPS motions, which are driven by a motor.

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a020000/a020300/a020339/WEBB_aftPallet_4k_30fps_h264.mp4

[url]https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/observatory/sunshield.html

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screenshot_20211227-143832_opera-jpg.889842
 
moon said:
Did you know that the lead guitarist with the progressive rock band- Queen- became an astrophysicist ? Yeah, Brian May. He even built his own guitar. Rock on.

th
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Thats pretty damn cool if you ask me!
 
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