Meanwhile, in space with James Webb … – Release

Opening the Sun Wizard case. Thursday evening, “Web engineers disassembled and removed the case to protect the thin layers of sun visor during launch.” NASA wrote. Thanks to small remote-controlled mechanisms, the case is now open and five sheets Captain (Plastic resistance to extreme temperatures) The heat shield is in the open (well, without air). They will soon be set to tennis court-sized diamond-shaped and tension-free.

In this way the plan proceeds in subtle steps. According to Mike Manzel, one of NASA’s chief engineers at James Webb’s mission, the mission had 344 single – point failures – 344 steps without a lifeline, leading to failure process failure. Failure of 80% of these single points is related to telescope expansion. “Hard to avoid when you have a release mechanism” As the man who separated the case from Sunvisor, Menzel described it at a press conference in early November. “You can not really plan an unnecessary system for it.”

Expansion of rear sun visor support. The rear wizard pallet is also fitted, almost six hours to the front.

Expansion of the front support of the sun visor. The big moves have begun! “Right now, we have deployed the front van of the Solar Shield. Think of this pallet as a cake pan that supports 5 layers of shield cake ”, Tries to explain NASA on Twitter. Fortunately, a short animated video makes it all the more clear and we want to compare the motion with the extension table: we drag the extension from one side of the table to the other, and then before unrolling another extension from the other side, the tablecloth (sun) rests on its support.

The tennis court-sized sun visor is made of five layers of hair-thick plastic insulation. It protects the telescope from radiation from the sun (and to some extent, the earth and the moon) to keep it cool. On the sun side, it is 85 C. On the other hand, sheltered from the shield, the telescope is located at -233 C. It is essential to observe distant emissions of galaxies in the infrared.

Beyond the Moon. The telescope just surpassed the average height of the moon, 384,400 kilometers. Already a quarter of its journey …

But when James has to put the brakes on and crack himself around himself, the most tricky part of the trip comes at the end. Lagrange point n ° 2. It is located at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth, where the gravitational fields are balanced so that the telescope is installed there almost without consuming energy, as the Earth accompanies the Earth in its revolution. Is annual around the sun.