The James Webb Telescope

[Zorba]

JWST wasn't designed with replaceable instruments. It does have a docking ring for future spacecraft to attach to it(not sure why) but trying to retro-fit non-replacable parts in space would be... difficult.

edit-
Old article from 2007
NASA Adds Docking Capability For Next Space Observatory

Yeah, I know, it is too late from day one of not having it in the plan. I really meant if it could refuel and have the wheels dumped with a remote vehicle. Replacing instruments remotely would be really cool, but a much harder feat.

 

[JEDI]

They spent ~$10 billion building the thing, which even if it works may not last more than 5 years (it only has enough coolant onboard to last for 5 years, but the engineers who built it "hope" they can stretch the coolant supplies out for around a 10 year service life.

Sometimes, I think all space scientists need leashes and keepers capable of demonstrating actual common sense. The politicians writing the checks obviously have none.

Development began in 1996 for a launch that was initially planned for 2007 with a US$500 million budget.[17]

There were numerous delays and cost overruns, including a major redesign in 2005,[18] a ripped sunshield during a practice deployment, a recommendation from an independent review board, the COVID-19 pandemic,[19][20][21] issues with the Ariane 5 rocket[22] and the telescope itself, and communications issues between the telescope and the launch vehicle.[23]


Holy delays and cost overruns Batman!
25yrs to launch?
20x over budget!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow did not realize it had been planed so long ago. So yeah hopefully they can get more than the projected 5-10 years out of it. I think Hubble was only suppose to last a short time too and it's still going.

What's crazy though is the money they spent on Webb is about a work week's worth of US military spending. Imagine if NASA had the military's budget.

 

[Charmonium]

It will be every effing pfennig. That assumes it manages to deploy properly. I watching a news report with artist conceptions of the deployment and just from a mechanical engineering POV it is just beyond amazing. For example, all of the heat shields are only 2 mil thick (IIRC) and there are about a half dozen each of which has to be mechanically stretched by a pulley system.

I'm very optimistic this will go off w/o a hitch and can you imagine what we'll see if it does a Hubble-style deep-field view? OMG. I'm excited just thinking about it.

 

[Artorias]

I assume this is going to see further into space than ever before. What images can we expect?

 

[JEDI]

I assume this is going to see further into space than ever before What images can we expect?

no idea but i assume Jesus level

 

[Charmonium]

...

 

[Charmonium]

I assume this is going to see further into space than ever before. What images can we expect?

The beginning of the universe. That's all.

The Hubble deep view showed us nascent galaxies that looked more or less like luminous blobs. What will that look like at 100x the magnification. And what if anything will we see beyond that?

 

[JEDI]

The beginning of the universe. That's all.

The Hubble deep view showed us nascent galaxies that looked more or less like luminous blobs. What will that look like at 100x the magnification. And what if anything will we see beyond that?

btw- our Milky Way galaxy is on a collision course and will be swallowed up by a bigger galaxy in a few billions years.

just like how our Milky Way galaxy collided and swallowed a smaller galaxy a few billions years ago

 

[Charmonium]

Eat or be eaten. It's a truly brutally magnificent universe. From blue giants, to binary and colliding neutron stars, to supernovae to magnetars (which have such powerful magnetic fields they would quite literally vaporize you just from the mind boggling magnetism).

 

[Zorba]

The beginning of the universe. That's all.

The Hubble deep view showed us nascent galaxies that looked more or less like luminous blobs. What will that look like at 100x the magnification. And what if anything will we see beyond that?

Not quite the beginning, about big bang plus 150M years. When light started to be made.

 

[Charmonium]

I think the fog cleared at 300k years but seriously, who's counting. Hahaha.

 

[Spacehead]

btw- our Milky Way galaxy is on a collision course and will be swallowed up by a bigger galaxy in a few billions years.

The Milky Way & Andromeda galaxies are going to merge eventually. Probably all or most of the Local Group also.

just like how our Milky Way galaxy collided and swallowed a smaller galaxy a few billions years ago

M54, one of the many globular clusters in Sagittarius, i found out is actually located in the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. So it's a globular cluster in another galaxy but you can't actually see the galaxy itself. I recently found out that this galaxy has passed thru the Milky Way several times before & will again before becoming part of the Milky Way.

 

[Spacehead]

APOD
James Webb Space Telescope over Earth

 

[Red Squirrel]

Looks like it just first image has just been taken and successfully downloaded to Earth.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

I assume this is going to see further into space than ever before. What images can we expect?

Lots of dark with a few specks here and there.

 

[Artorias]

Lots of dark with a few specks here and there.

So I take it we wont be seeing this fella then.

 

[Roger Wilco]

Antenna assembly for transmitting data back to earth successfully deployed today.

"This antenna will be used to send at least 28.6 Gbytes of science data down from the observatory, twice a day," NASA officials wrote in a mission update. "The team has now released and tested the motion of the antenna assembly — the entire process took about one hour."

https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-deploys-antenna

 

[Charmonium]

Warning: 60's tv reference - Martin has managed to get his antennae up. All martians have this trouble from time to time.

APOD
James Webb Space Telescope over Earth

That's some outta this world bling.

 

[IronWing]

Antenna assembly for transmitting data back to earth successfully deployed today.

"This antenna will be used to send at least 28.6 Gbytes of science data down from the observatory, twice a day," NASA officials wrote in a mission update. "The team has now released and tested the motion of the antenna assembly — the entire process took about one hour."

https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-deploys-antenna

The telescope has a faster data rate from the L2 LaGrange Point than I have from my house. Fix my lighthouse.

 

[JEDI]

The telescope has a faster data rate from the L2 LaGrange Point than I have from my house. Fix my lighthouse.

but did you spend $10B for your data capabilities?

 

[Roger Wilco]

Made it past the moon's orbit, doesn't seem to have blown up yet.

 

[K1052]

Yeah, I know, it is too late from day one of not having it in the plan. I really meant if it could refuel and have the wheels dumped with a remote vehicle. Replacing instruments remotely would be really cool, but a much harder feat.

If everything is working pretty well and all it needs is fuel a servicing mission will be pretty tempting given the huge investment in the observatory. With space capabilities slated to further expand in the coming years it at least seems possible.

 

[Denly]

Not quite the beginning, about big bang plus 150M years. When light started to be made.

Sci stupid here, I get the concept of looking back in time but how do they know the specific time frame they're looking at? big bang + 150m seen like very specific in space's term.

A though, 10b sound like a large sum of $$$ in science's term but is pocket change in military/mega corp term. And this is just wrong, there should be a gofundme page for mega sci project like this. 50% of the world donate $3 will get it done.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Sci stupid here, I get the concept of looking back in time but how do they know the specific time frame they're looking at? big bang + 150m seen like very specific in space's term.

By the red shift, which is a very specific and easy to measure thing to within a very, very tight margin.

 

[repoman0]

By the red shift, which is a very specific and easy to measure thing to within a very, very tight margin.

To be fair, it’s not quite as straightforward to relate redshift back to distance or age. Redshift tells us precisely how fast something is moving away from us, but there is a lot of theoretical physics and modeling of the expansion of the universe that goes into correlating that back to an age and absolute distance. It’s pretty fascinating how it’s done and even more fascinating how recent a science all of that is. Less than a hundred years ago we thought the Milky Way galaxy was the entire universe.