The science team outlined their plan to make the most of the $10 billion opportunity with NASA's newest space observatory on schedule.
The James Webb Space Telescope arrived a few days ago at its destination at the L2 point away from our planet.
The town hall was hosted by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
Engineers continued to work on getting the observatory up and running as the town hall took place. This week, it turned on its science instruments. The observatory will be ready through five more months of work.
There are pictures of the James Webb Space Telescope.
The deputy senior project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center gave a brief update on how things are going after walking through the last few months of preparation. He noted that everything is going to plan in a few words.
He said that there were 50 major deployment and they were all successful.
Data from backyard observatories and professional locations is already being sent back. He said that people have been taking light curves at places such as the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope.
The sun shield reflects the sunlight directly at the Earth, and sometimes it does.
The project scientist at the observatory said that it will take several more months.
He said that the process of aligning the telescope will take about three months and that the optical performance of the telescope will be assessed.
There will be several complex steps, such as identification of images, aligning different mirror segments, and eventually phasing the segments to within a fraction of a wavelength.
To guide mirror alignment, the team will focus each of the 18 primary mirror segments on a bright, distant star called HD 84406, which is part of the constellation Ursa Major.
The telescope's performance will change as it continues to cool, which is an additional layer of complexity. The operating temperature of the telescope will be about 45 degrees above absolute zero, which is equal to minus 373 degrees Fahrenheit.
Due to expected reaction wheel and cryocooler vibrations, Webb will always have a slight twinge. Solar heating on the observatory will cause the telescope to drift over time. Engineers will periodically make adjustments to the telescope, even though they are expected to be very small.
The team is getting ready to begin science operations through the commission of the instruments, which was scheduled to begin last week.
The two-month intense period where we check out the science instruments and get them ready for science operations will kick off the instruments coming alive.
Calibration will not be completed during the period when the instruments are commissioned.
The first round of early science is expected to take place after the six-month mark of the mission. She said that this means the instruments will be ready for operations. There are coronagraphic observations of debris desks around some brighter stars and a star that has a transiting super-Earth planet.
The first images will be released around the same time. There will be a set of showcase images designed to be on the front pages of media all around the world. The good, the bad, and the ugly will all be made public at that time.
Past estimates suggest that the telescope will have 20 years worth of fuel on board, but that estimate will need to be refined as the telescope performs periodic firings from the solar wind.
The activity will take place every three weeks because we have to spin the reaction wheels down by firing the thrusters. She said that the health of the instruments will likely be the limiting lifetime problem.
Klaus Pontoppidan said that normal science operations are already in the works.
The proposals for early science are available on the website. Everything is in a long-range schedule and then every 10 days or so the team draws up a shorter-range schedule that attempts to be flexible for unforeseen events such as comets, meaning short-term phenomena in the sky.
If the schedule continues to go to plan, the proposals for operational science will be due in January 2023. The exact proposal submission date will be determined as the commission proceeds.
The ambitious science agenda of the telescope will likely make it highly oversubscribed, as it goes from learning about the early universe to studying heavenly objects.
There were questions about increasing the amount of the observing budget, any efforts to increase equity, diversity and inclusion in science proposals, and a previous proposal to rename the telescope.
Eric Smith, a program scientist at NASA Headquarters, encouraged participants in the community to raise questions to the team to adjust future science cycle proposals.
The decision to change the name of the telescope came down to the NASA senior team and the telescope team, he said.
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