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James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

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Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#81

Post by neatze »

s5300 wrote: post #58
EMM_386 wrote: post #9

This was an absurdly teeth-clenching deployment. And no back-up, even if the Ariane launch failed. No back-up. Congrats to everyone across the board for getting this amazing telescope right where it needs to be. Now all we need is the mirror alignment and we're in for some seriously incredible science.

It’s really sad to think about how well NASA works when you consider how little funding they get and how hard they have to fight for it. It’s honestly quite ridiculous. I know a lot of military industrial complex boils down to being nationwide jobs programs, e.g. everything to do with the F-35. But NASA? I don’t think they’re anywhere near as close to being a “jobs program” Off the top of my head, I really can’t thin…

What are you talking about Webb was build by contracting defense contractors, like for example Northrop Grumman (primary contractor if not mistaken) and Lockheed Martin who also build F-35, there is YouTube video where Lockheed does presentation about Webb telescope project complexity.

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#82

Post by _ph_ »

I am quite relieved that all the deployment worked out and so looking forward to the first images. I hope, planning for a true Hubble successor (a telescope in the visual range) starts soon. Maybe a one-off Starship could be the telescope housing, it would enable an 8m mirror without any folding, just the tip of the Starship would open up once in orbit.

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#83

Post by CrazyStat »

js8 wrote: post #75
bestouff wrote: post #4

It's funny how the excellent job of the French Ariane launcher is nowhere to be seen in this (and others) article.

Worse, journalists often compare Webb with Hubble, but they mostly ignore the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_Space_Observatory , which had a larger primary mirror (for example, https://webb.nasa.gov/content/observatory/ote/mirrors/index.... ). It's a very subtle form of American exceptionalism.

I'm not sure it's American exceptionalism, just that Hubble has been around a long time and is much more prominent in the public conscience thanks to iconic images like the Hubble deep field.

If someone builds a big new ocean liner you know journalists are going to compare it to the Titanic. Same thing.

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#84

Post by wlesieutre »

ctdonath wrote: post #63

Amazing how a few meters of mirror can make out objects billions of light-years distant. Yes it's big - insofar as human-built telescopes have been - yet is so relatively minuscule per what it observes. Having gone from first flight to JWST in such a short time is staggering (Wright Bros 120 years ago - I've been alive nearly half that time); how soon will we achieve orders-of-magnitude bigger telescopes? say, multip…

In a slightly different vein, ESA's Gaia mission measured the distances to billions of stars by looking at how their position shifts as we orbit from one side of the sun to the other. Not taking highly detailed images like JWST, but in some ways you can think of it as a telescope the size of Earth's orbit.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Gaia/P...

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/gaia-makes-most-a...

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#85

Post by snakeboy »

Laremere wrote: post #74
Tenemo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destin's channel is one of the older, best-known channels in the YT's educational sphere. Recently, the US Navy even let him on a multi-day tour of a nuclear submarine and tape classified information (later redacted). He himself worked in the military. I don't think that it's fair calling him a random youtuber, to me he seems like the perfect youtuber to interview such people (as Destin himself has a background in ro…

Destin has also peaked (or very close to it) in importance of person interviewed, as he interviewed Obama during their presidency. Though, sadly not an hour long. https://youtu.be/GpWQHFzrEqc

Just out of curiosity, is it considered best practice these days to use the gender-neutral "their" even with a specific subject (Obama) who is known to use masculine pronouns for himself?

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#86

Post by belter »

sillyquiet wrote: post #64

I think Destin of the Smarter Every Day YT channel had an interview a couple years ago with Dr. John Mather, the senior project scientist of the JWST, where he asked something like "will you be nervous during the launch and deployments", and Dr. Mather replied " I don't get anxious about stuff I can't deal with", and that they've tested everything they thought of to test. I was super impressed with Dr. Mather, not on…

Its a great interview and starts with his Dad, who also worked on the JWST... https://youtu.be/4P8fKd0IVOs

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#87

Post by marcosdumay »

ainiriand wrote: post #41
thret wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Football fields' seem particularly vague as there are half a dozen different sports called football, and each of these have different sized fields.

There are quite a few miles too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile_(disambiguation)

Yeah, and there used to be more. That's why people standardized the meter.

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#88

Post by bencoder »

lucideer wrote: post #47
titzer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those size comparisons are super misleading. I've seen the shuttle and it's not that big. A 737 is pretty small. The shuttle can ride piggy-back on a 747--in fact it was designed to: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/news/FactSheets/FS-01... Also, the comparison with the Statue of Liberty is also misleading. The Statue of Liberty is on a huge pedestal that makes it stand much, much higher; the orbiter and booste…

The sum of your comment seems to be the subjective belief that the statue of liberty and 737s are "not that big"... Not sure what size you'd expect the shuttles to be, but being in the same ballpark as the statue of liberty (without pedestal) seems a great deal larger than my expectations.

Having never actually seen the statue of liberty my sense when seeing these comparisons is that it's much smaller in real life than the version in my imagination - no matter how many times I see the comparisons, the statue remains much bigger in my head

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#89

Post by NikolaeVarius »

samstave wrote: post #56
PinkMilkshake wrote: post #3

I'm a little embarrassed to say this and I don't know exactly what I pictured in my head, but I had no idea these telescopes were so big[1]. I guess I never saw one pictured next to a human. I've only seen pictures of satellites being worked on so I expected something more human sized? It seems so stupid now, especially since earth telescopes are huge. [1] https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a013500/a013522/JWST_v.…

May I please subscribe to the raw images of ANY space telescope... I mean * WE* /paid/ for them... I would like to access the data provided in real-time. Where can one get the raw images?

> I would like to access the data provided in real-time.

Telemetry is unencrypted. You have access to the data in real time. Have fun getting useful data out of it.

> Where can one get the raw images?

Online ,its all public. You might need a pHD to figure out how to make it useful to the mark 1 eyeball

Re: James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away

#90

Post by toomuchtodo »

wongarsu wrote: post #78
amelius wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russians had the Buran, with more or less the same dimensions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

I've heard the (probably unfounded) story that the Soviets saw the Space Shuttle, couldn't figure out why the Americans would build it but figured there surely must be a good reason; so they copied it to also have whatever capability the Americans were after.

Buran was also superior in capabilities; greater lift capacity, ability to transport more people, and attain higher orbits. It could also perform a mission entirely autonomously.

The US Space Shuttle was the (heavy) inspiration, but the Soviets put their own spin on it.

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