James Webb Space Telescope Launch — Official NASA Broadcast

Launch date has been moved to Christmas day at 7:20

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I see they scheduled the launch for the morning to allow Santa to clear the airspace.

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Yup. NORAD tracks Santa

This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

(Thanks for reopening this, @Laura :+1:)

The heat shields have been fully deployed and tensioned as of this morning, I saw earlier.

This has a handy timeline and stepwise progress feature (it needs to be refreshed if you keep it on an open tab, of course):

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(Update from page posted just above)…

Starboard primary mirror wing deployment begins and is completed
Webb is fully deployed. Completed Jan. 8, ~10:30 a.m. EST

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Bravo! I watched it live.

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Webb begins its months-long mirror alignment…
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/01/12/webb-begins-its-months-long-mirror-alignment/

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So this is quite a feat for robotics as well… sending up the telescope with assembly required.

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And unpacking, removing the shipping snubbers.

Part of me still can’t believe that the major deployment was a complete success. Kudo’s to NASA, ESA, and all of the other people involved. I’m hoping they were able to write off their antacid purchases as a business expense.

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There were 344 single points of failure and “just 49 single point failures remain” as of last Saturday:

It’s Done! JWST Successfully Deployed – SpacePolicyOnline.com

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Update:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/01/24/orbital-insertion-burn-a-success-webb-arrives-at-l2/

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Hi everyone, I’m Kevin. Unfortunately, I have not found the “introduce yourself” topic, so…
To cut a long story short, I have always been a great astronomy and space techs fan. Now be working as a technical consultant. I’ve decided to join this cosy community in order to exhange thoughts and knowledge, and I think it is the exact place for this :smiley:

I’m very happy of the success of the Webb Telescope, it’s a huge breakthrough! I know the engineer that took part in developing the telescope. I met him at a forum a long time ago.
He worked on JWST in different capacities. The most curious thing is that he runs a company that supplied all of the optical metrology test equipment for the JWST program. Its interferometers were used to test all of the optical components of the telescope.
For example, they made the multi-wavelength interferometer, which helped to measure how well the aligned primary mirror was phased during testing. It is the most curious communicating experience I’ve ever had

So, I’m happy to be here, among like-minded people :wink:

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I found a cool explanation of JWST by Neil deGrasse Tyson, highly recommend you to watch it

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Welcome to the forum, @Kevin_Hall Kevin! It is good to have you here. The participants here are a diverse group, but we try to keep it friendly, even when poking the bear a bit.
I was thrilled to hear the JWST was at its final destination, and anxious to see the first images in the next few months.

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You might be interested in this scientist/priest:

Meet the Episcopal priest moonlighting as a Mars rover mission scientist

Yes, thanks for that. I didn’t know that it was going to be able to look within the solar system as well, and that was a special software add-on.

JWST can be seen from Earth

image

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