3 ms·
I was a little disappointed, because I'd watched the animation last night. The only differences were in the first 4 seconds (before it hit the clouds) and afte
by kurthr 5y ago
I was a little disappointed, because I'd watched the animation last night.
The only differences were in the first 4 seconds (before it hit the clouds) and after the spring launch, when we caught the solar panel deploy in the sun with earth below from the 2nd stage. At least everything went as planned!
I was surprised at the timeline and how rapidly it slows before reaching the L2 orbit. It's already fallen from 4mps to 1.7mps in the first few hours. Even though it takes 30 days to reach L2, it will be 30% of the way there in the first day.
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html
- dredmorbius 5y agoThe difference: today's event relied on the animation to show planned mission phases. And was accompanied by confirmations that those phases had in fact executed according to the plan. The live shots of the JWST and solar array deploy were bonus. Clear skies would've been nice. A good flight beats that though ;-)
- 1_player 5y agoFrom my limited understanding of orbital mechanics from playing Kerbal Space Program, the furthest point of the orbit (aphelion) is where you reach minimum velocity. So to leave the Earth, you accelerate a lot (the so called burn) so that your orbit grows and as you get there your speed has been decreasing the whole way, and it increases back again after passing aphelion on your way back to Earth (perihelion).
- 1_player 5y agoEdit: should be periapsis and apoapsis instead of perihelion and aphelion