The deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope's sun shield was completed on January 4, 2022, and was seen here during the final deployment test in December 2020.
The scientists and engineers working on the $10 billion instrument are feeling a lot better now that NASA has deployed the James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA and the telescope's primary contractor, Northrop Grumman, successfully stretched all five layers of the telescope's sun shield as of late Tuesday morning. The deployment of the telescope's massive and essential sun shield is critical to keeping the telescope cold so that it can make delicate observations of faint objects.
Hilary Stock, a structural engineer at the company, spoke with reporters about the mood during a teleconference. It was a wonderful moment. A lot of joy. A lot of relief.
The sun shield is very delicate. The plastic sheet had to be stretched across a tennis court-sized area. Microgravity was the environment that could not be used in ground tests.
Alphonso Stewart, the deployment systems lead, said that it was the first time they deployed the system in zero-g. It's a testament to the work done by the teams.
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Much could have gone wrong. The sun shield layers were not always shiny during ground-based tests. It's easy to understand why. The unfolding and tensioning of the sun shield involved more than 100 release mechanisms, 70 hinge assembly, eight deployment motors, 400 pulleys, and 90 individual cables, according to NASA.
NASA has overcome the most complex aspect of unpacking the telescope in space and setting it up for operations by getting through the sun shield deployment process.
The sun shield deployment was the most complex in terms of moving parts having to all work in harmony, and systems that were interrelated with one another, said James Cooper, the telescope's sun shield manager. The stuff that is left from a deployment point of view is more conventional, such as hinges and motors.
NASA expects to deploy the secondary mirror and primary mirror wings by Monday. The process should be finished in a couple of weeks. At this point, the telescope should reach its destination, a stable Lagrange point, which is about 1.5 million km from Earth.
Aligning the mirrors of the telescope and calibrating the science instruments will begin after this. Science observations will start in June. The universe is waiting.
