ORLANDO, Fla., Jan. 8 (UPI) -- NASA and mission controllers plan to complete the complex major deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope on Saturday, as its giant golden mirror unfolds fully about 700,000 miles from Earth.
Saturday's deployment is set to begin no earlier than 9 a.m. EST. Teams of engineers will send commands to Webb to release latches first.
The mirror-unfolding process only takes about 5 minutes, but locking it in place takes about 2 hours, according to NASA.
The $10 billion observatory is on the 14th day of its million-mile journey after launching from South America on Dec. 25, roughly halfway through its timeline for deployment.
The final steps on Saturday will wrap up the most significant preparations to use the telescope -- unfolding shields, mirrors, radiators and sensors.
"To retire most of the risk of deployment like this, the relief is huge," Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist, told UPI in an interview. "We're looking forward to the moment we can turn on the instruments and start to see light on the detectors, even if it's completely unfocused light at first."
The mirror that will complete unfolding Saturday is 21 feet, 4 inches across and made of beryllium coated with reflective gold. It is the shape and size that scientists determined was needed to measure infrared light from the earliest galaxies.
But that huge instrument could never fit on top of the world's available rockets, so it had to be folded for final assembly in space. Two wings of the mirror were folded, the first of which unfolded on Friday, NASA said.
But the telescope isn't ready for science yet, Pontoppidan said.
"The remaining work we have to do is to precisely align each of the mirror's 18 hexagonal segments," he said. "Nothing like this has ever been done in space before. We are confident, but there are still critical steps to ensure that you can get the sharp images and sharp data."
If anything went wrong, mission control teams can now take their time to troubleshoot solutions, said Scott Friedman, Webb commissioning scientist.
That wasn't the case with the first few steps of the deployment because the spacecraft needed to extend solar panels for power, and its giant sun shield to begin cooling the super-sensitive instruments.
Most of the deployment has occurred as scheduled, with the exception of one day of delay while teams took a needed break and tweaked systems on the spacecraft to adjust to conditions in space, Friedman said.
But it will still take about five more months before the observatory is fully commissioned and proven to be reliable for cutting-edge astronomy, he said.
"Once the segments of the mirror are aligned, we will check out the instruments for about three months, taking images to assist in that process," Friedman said. "And then finally, it's another two months before we have shown that all aspects of the instruments are ready to support astronomical observations."
Exactly when the public will see Webb's first images isn't known yet, or even what those images will show, he said.
"It's definitely a secret, because the images need to be authenticated, and everyone is hoping for a big surprise. We expect to be surprised," he said.
Friedman, who works for the non-profit Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, said he hopes Webb inspires a surge of interest in astronomy just as Hubble did when it launched in 1990 and sent back its first quality images.
But Webb's more sensitive instruments will penetrate the gas and dust of space objects that have limited Hubble's vision at times.
Such targets will include galaxies, supermassive black holes, nebulae, pulsars and exoplanets. Scientists anticipate Webb will help them identify the makeup of atmospheres around planets in distant solar systems.
"We are going to see things we've never seen, even for objects that we know are there, let alone things that we have yet to discover," Friedman said.
"complete" - Google News
January 08, 2022 at 04:00PM
https://ift.tt/3eZpB9n
James Webb telescope set to complete major deployment - UPI News
"complete" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2Fvz4Dj
https://ift.tt/2YsogAP
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "James Webb telescope set to complete major deployment - UPI News"
Post a Comment