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And this isn't like hubble, where we could (and did) send up a space shuttle to fix an issue after launch. Really scary.
by knd775 7y ago
And this isn't like hubble, where we could (and did) send up a space shuttle to fix an issue after launch. Really scary.
- Klathmon 7y agoTo 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, the Hubble is ~600km away from the surface orbiting the Earth, and the Moon is a little under 400,000km away from the earth. JWT will be almost 4x further away than even the moon.
- escapecharacter 7y agoI mean, the giddy idiot in me just gets excited about the urgent need for a human L2 mission to fix it.
- lostmyoldone 7y agoLikewise. My train of thought goes like "So what if it fails? There's a lot of money sunk into that! Well, maybe someone would actually decide it's worth going to the L2 to fix it, wouldn't that be cool!!" So yeah, not the only idiot...
- GlenTheMachine 7y agoWe would probably do this robotically.
- ethbro 7y ago"What do we do when the robotic satellite fails?" "Send another robot!"
- GlenTheMachine 7y agohttps://sspd.gsfc.nasa.gov/restore-L.html https://sspd.gsfc.nasa.gov/restore-L.html also https://www.darpa.mil/program/robotic-servicing-of-geosynchronous-satellites https://www.darpa.mil/program/robotic-servicing-of-geosynchr...
- jvanderbot 7y agoThank you. I was hoping to post these!
- Buttons840 7y ago"What do we do when the L2 point is filled with broken robots?" Could that happen?
- GlenTheMachine 7y agoUnclear. L2 is an unstable Lagrange point, so the robots wouldn't just stay put. But that doesn't mean they would leave, either, necessarily. They could end up in funky Lissajous orbits and go flying through L2 regularly. The orbital mechanics around Lagrange points are weird.
- mikeash 7y agoIf SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy (née BFR) actually pans out, it should be able to easily perform this mission.
- bdamm 7y agoWith the irony being that if BFR pans out, this mission could have ended up being launched on it and eliminate a pile of complexity in the process. The mirrors wouldn't have to be hinged, for example.
- jvanderbot 7y agoImagine going back to 1984, and telling the Hubble successor team "Just wait for a future heavy commercial space launch before planning any larger telescopes". Or to 1997, and telling Goddard "Your specs will require technological development that we feel should be halted until a commercial spaceflight program develops. We're pretty sure next year someone will found a e-commerce business that will make him a billionaire, and he'll sort it all out." Or to 2002, when tech internet tech was booming and paypal was going IPO, to tell TRW that the $824 million they just acquired should be put on a shelf until about 20 years later. Or to 2005, 12 years before BFR was announced, when it appeared cost growth was a factor (not at all related to northrup aquisitions). Again, 2010 it passed review, 7 years before announcement. Is it really irony or somehow a waste? I don't think so. (Full disclosure: I'm working on alternative tech to deoployables for large-aperture telescopes, but I greatly appreciate their efforts on JWST, given what we had over the last 20 years).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoWe also can't fix this, because it was designed to be unfixable. Making it fixable would counter productively make the design more complex.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jjoonathan 7y agoWith a $10 billion telescope dead in the water and the clock ticking, Louis Rossman leads a crack team of Apple repairmen -- specialists in fixing sytems designed to be unfixable -- through accelerated astronaut training for a last-chance human mission to L2! Will they save the day? Or will the inky clutches of space doom the mission and leave them stranded farther from civilization than any human in history?
- RosanaAnaDana 7y agoElon Musk spots them a SpaceX rocket. Joe Rogan puts them through basic training. I'd watch this youtube red series
- hhh 7y agoCan't wait for the theater version, starring Louis Rossman!
- zanny 7y agoStarring Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson as Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
- rakoo 7y agoMinor 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 7y ago[deleted]
- boardwaalk 7y agoI don't think that's true? At the exact L2 point, the forces are zero, anywhere off that point, they are non-zero, away from the point, from what I understand. Ref: https://www.space.com/30302-lagrange-points.html https://www.space.com/30302-lagrange-points.html "L1, L2 and L3 are all unstable points with precarious equilibrium."
- robertfw 7y agoThat is incorrect, L2 is not a stable lagrange point, and will require station keeping adjustments to remain in position
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoThey need to use fuel to station keep, there is a hard time limit to this.mission
- TremendousJudge 7y agoIs it known how long it would last? Wikipedia doesn't say anything about this issue
- gootdude 7y agoThe mission is minimum of 5 years with maximum 10 years based on the fuel. https://jwst.nasa.gov/faq.html#howlong https://jwst.nasa.gov/faq.html#howlong
- 7y ago
- testvox 7y agoAlso Hubble was pretty much a derivative design of existing spy satellites, just fit with some different lenses and pointed in a different direction.