On December 25th, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched from French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket.
Nine days after the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA says it has made good progress and begun the critical process of "tensioning" the sun shield.
The first of five layers of the sun shield was fully extended on Monday with the help of six motors on the telescope. The Kapton layers will shade the instrument and allow it to cool down to 50 degrees above absolute zero, which is -223 degrees Celsius. The cold environment is important for detecting heat from distant objects.
The first of the five layers should be deployed by the end of the day. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the goal is to extend the other four layers. After this time, the massive sun shield will be complete.
During a teleconference with reporters on Monday, Ochs said he didn't expect any drama over the next few days.
Most of the way there will be taken by NASA after this sequence. The telescope must undergo 343 actions where a single-point failure could scuttle it. The instrument will be through 70 to 75 percent of single-point failures after sun shield deployment.
Advertisement
The deployment of the secondary mirror support structure and the unfolding of the second mirror wing are some of the major activities yet to be completed. The deployment phase could be completed by this weekend.
NASA engineers and thousands of scientists will start to exhale a sigh of relief when science operations begin in mid-2022. After less than 20 days, the telescope will either be fully deployed or not.
NASA and the telescope's primary contractor, Northrop Grumman, have been working 12-hour shifts since the Christmas Day launch of an Ariane 5 rocket. The teams worked on two relatively minor issues over the weekend.
There are five layers to the sun.
The performance of the telescope's solar array was the first issue. The original configuration of the five panels proved not to be optimal. She said that the array was rebalanced to reach full power. Going forward, this is not expected to be a problem.
The tensioning process involved six motors. They were running a bit hot, but after the telescope was moved to keep them cooler, they are 327 Kelvin, well below the operating limit. She said she expects the motors to stay under the limit.
