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The deployment of the telescope looks quite a complicated process.
by simosx 10y ago
The deployment of the telescope looks quite a complicated process.
- adevine 10y agoYeah, honestly, I think I got anxious for the engineers just watching it. If any of that unfurling just hits one minor snag, it's 8.7 billion up in smoke. Does anyone with more information about the telescope know how they are able to keep such tight tolerances given how the telescope deploys? For example, I remember the original Hubble telescope had a spherical aberration that amounted to less than the width of a human hair. Surely the way the side mirrors deploy, and the way the front mirror unfolds into place, can't have tolerances that tight. How does the telescope account for that potential variance?
- maxxxxx 10y agoThe Hubble's problem wasn't tolerances but the mirror got produced with the wrong numbers. For the wrong numbers it was within tolerance :-). But yes, I am not sure if I could handle the stress on working on something like this for years and then watch it deploy without any possibility of fixing problems. This must be incredibly stressful.
- ridgeguy 10y agoBringing up Webb is a six-month process after it gets on station. According to [1], in months 2 and 3 the mirror positions are adjusted to bring them into optimum optical alignment. I haven't found anything on the type of actuators used for this. [1] http://jwst.nasa.gov/faq.html http://jwst.nasa.gov/faq.html (in section 16)
- eps 10y agohttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bTxLAGchWnA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bTxLAGchWnA Launch, transfer to the L2 orbit and deployment will take ~30 days.