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James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

phys.org

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Re: James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

#51

Post by Damorian »

skizm wrote: post #34

Anyone know if there are any well paying jobs in space programs of any kind? I've been seeing a growing number of reputable universities offering a wider range of space / aerospace / engineering offerings* and I've been getting curious what's out there. Only issue is, a lot of places I looked pay well below market rates :/ (at least for software engineers). I'll admit my expectations might be off considering I've bee…

Just adding on to this. The government funded research labs and DoD contractors I've had offers from have been seriously sad, which makes me concerned on the quality of their missions, personally. Also it's frustrating because I'd much rather work in that space. I'm a senior dev making ~140k and was just offered 80k in a higher cost of living to manage a team of 10 developers with TS clearance working on spy satellite imaging. I don't consider myself a particularly strong developer, so who is taking these jobs?

Re: James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

#52

Post by 0xffff2 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #12
gjm11 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main imager is the Near Infrared Camera. It has ten 2048x2048 sensors. They're configured in two kinda-independent groups with separate optics. Each group uses one of those sensors for longer wavelengths (so you get two lots of 2048x2048), and four of them for shorter wavelengths (so you get two lots of 4096x4096). The two modules can (and I guess usually will) be pointed at adjacent regions of the sky; I expect…

Considering how much camera sensors have improved in the last few years I wonder how outdated these sensors are (or not) Edit: makes me also wonder if with all the delays they upgrade any equipment in the meantime.

> makes me also wonder if with all the delays they upgrade any equipment in the meantime.

This is how you never launch the damn thing. There is just no way to "upgrade any equipment" without introducing a tremendous amount of paperwork, additional testing, etc.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

#53

Post by NortySpock »

leeoniya wrote: post #26

> one step closer to its 2021 launch boy, that's gonna be a nail-biter. who's gonna insure that launch?

No one. Or, more accurately, the government self-insures most launches, and eats the cost of a failed launch.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

#54

Post by jcadam »

mdorazio wrote: post #38
jcadam wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a bit of warning: Software Engineering in Aerospace is NOT fun. You're basically in a supporting role to the hardware and system engineers designing the spacecraft. It's pure drudgery... process to the point of absurdity, specs and tasks being spoon fed to you with little room for creativity and/or problem solving, etc. The pay, benefits, and level of respect on the job reflect all of that. If you really want to…

To be fair, the reason for this is that if you try to be creative and don't follow strict processes, things fail a million miles from Earth or blow up entirely.

Oh, I admit there are good reasons for it. And there are people who prefer such a rigid, structured, and slow-paced environment. I ran into plenty while I was stuck doing that sort of work.

Good for them. The world needs such people, probably in much greater numbers than it needs people like me -- if it needs people like me at all :)

Re: James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

#55

Post by NikolaeVarius »

petschge wrote: post #41
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge difference is that Apollo had highly trained human beings on board to fix things that could not be planned for. There were also 10 previous missions to Apollo 11 to work out the kinks, with one failing with loss of life. JW is not designed to be fixed or fail, nor are there training runs. It HAS to work first shot.

Regarding the 10 missions before Apollo 11: It's a little more complicated. Apollo 1 is the name that was given to honor the astronauts who died in the pad accident. Apollo 2 and 3 didn't exists. But a whole bunch of other tests did exist testing Saturn 5 before we got to the unmanned Apollo 4, 5 and 6 tests. And starting with Apollo 7 humans were included. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions fo…

I probably should have known this. I've read alot on Apollo, but never really internalized some of these facts.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

#56

Post by rakoo »

Klathmon wrote: post #32
knd775 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this isn't like hubble, where we could (and did) send up a space shuttle to fix an issue after launch. Really scary.

To be a bit more specific, we can't send something up to fix this because it's magnitudes further away from the earth than Hubble is. JWT will be ~1.5 million km away from earth, in a special orbit around a spot called the "L2 Lagrange point". It's located there so that it can kind of hide in the earth's shadow at pretty much all times and keep all the nearby "bright" things behind the heat shield. For comparison, th…

Minor nitpick, but the L2 point is selected so it doesn't need fuel to stay there. It's like a gravity well of the earth/sun system, any object getting a little further from it will get back to it.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

#57

Post by maxxxxx »

jcadam wrote: post #37
skizm wrote: post #34

Anyone know if there are any well paying jobs in space programs of any kind? I've been seeing a growing number of reputable universities offering a wider range of space / aerospace / engineering offerings* and I've been getting curious what's out there. Only issue is, a lot of places I looked pay well below market rates :/ (at least for software engineers). I'll admit my expectations might be off considering I've bee…

Just a bit of warning: Software Engineering in Aerospace is NOT fun. You're basically in a supporting role to the hardware and system engineers designing the spacecraft. It's pure drudgery... process to the point of absurdity, specs and tasks being spoon fed to you with little room for creativity and/or problem solving, etc. The pay, benefits, and level of respect on the job reflect all of that. If you really want to…

Agreed. I have talked to people at JPL and all their tools are completely outdated, they have no room for creativity and everything they do is constantly watched and reviewed. Unless you are way up in leadership this doesn’t seem much fun.

Maybe it works at a startup where they try do something completely new but as soon as your stuff gets close to production it won’t be much fun.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

#58

Post by maxxxxx »

mdorazio wrote: post #38
jcadam wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a bit of warning: Software Engineering in Aerospace is NOT fun. You're basically in a supporting role to the hardware and system engineers designing the spacecraft. It's pure drudgery... process to the point of absurdity, specs and tasks being spoon fed to you with little room for creativity and/or problem solving, etc. The pay, benefits, and level of respect on the job reflect all of that. If you really want to…

To be fair, the reason for this is that if you try to be creative and don't follow strict processes, things fail a million miles from Earth or blow up entirely.

Nothing wrong with that. But you should know what you are getting into.

Re: James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

#59

Post by mikepurvis »

nullwasamistake wrote: post #29
enceladus_ice wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big amount of the complexity comes from the folded up sunshield. I remember it had torn during a test deployment last year. Here is a quick animation showing the whole deployment process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpVz3UrSsE4

If it tears bad it's technically possible to send up a shield that floats near the telescope. There were some plans for that way back during the design phase if I remember right. Still wouldn't be cheap or easy

It looks from the renders like the telescope has solar panels, antennas, etc on the sun/earth-side of the shield. Wouldn't sending a standalone shield screw that up as it would shade them?

Re: James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test

#60

Post by [deleted] »

rakoo wrote: post #56
Klathmon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be a bit more specific, we can't send something up to fix this because it's magnitudes further away from the earth than Hubble is. JWT will be ~1.5 million km away from earth, in a special orbit around a spot called the "L2 Lagrange point". It's located there so that it can kind of hide in the earth's shadow at pretty much all times and keep all the nearby "bright" things behind the heat shield. For comparison, th…

Minor nitpick, but the L2 point is selected so it doesn't need fuel to stay there. It's like a gravity well of the earth/sun system, any object getting a little further from it will get back to it.

[deleted]
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