The deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope is nerve-racking, but some of the most nail-biting moments will happen on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
The observatory's engineering team has checked off all the boxes on its to-do list so far, and you can get your own check-off list here.
The giant sun shield will be unfolding on December 31st. The sun shield is approximately the size of a tennis court.
A graphic shows all the steps needed to unfold the Universe. Credit: NASA.
The entire set will last for two days. The Sunshield Port Side Mid-Boom Extension will come on December 31st. The start time is 9:20 AM. The Starboard side will be deployed on January 1.
The major deployment is shown in a video. The sun shield deployment starts at 1:45 in the video.
The sun shield was folded like a parachute and stowed onto the forward and the aft unitized pallet structures for launch. The telescope and sun shield support structures are connected to each other and the bus in order to fit within the Ariane 5's fairing.
Kapton is a shiny material that is used in the sun shield. The sun shield covers that protected the thin layers of the sun shield were rolled up by the engineers. The team executed commands to roll the covers up into a holding position after they were released, exposing the sun shield to space for the first time. The deployment took about an hour.
The telescopic mid-booms push out from the bus and pull the folded stack of sun shield layers out into the final.
Around 7,000 parts are involved in this deployment, including 400 pulleys. To keep the telescope's components as cold as possible, the sun shield's deployment is crucial. The faint signatures of distant objects will be detected by the JWST. It will take several weeks for the telescope and scientific instruments to reach stable temperatures after they start to cool rapidly in the shade of the sun shield.
The sun shield layers will be tensioned into position if all goes well over the next two days.
Critical activities must be executed for a successful mission, even though the steps have been tested on the ground and operationally practiced in the Mission Operations Center. Best wishes to our team, and stay cool!
You can find more information about the sun shield here.
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