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More great news. Congratulations to all who have worked on the project. I understand the reasons for not putting a camera on or near the JWST, but I’m still a
by jl6 5y ago
More great news. Congratulations to all who have worked on the project.
I understand the reasons for not putting a camera on or near the JWST, but I’m still a little sad that we’ll probably never get to see the thing in situ in all its operational glory.
Maybe one day when it finally expires, we can launch a “sample return” mission to tow it back.
- daveslash 5y agoRE>> "I understand the reasons for not putting a camera on or near the JWST" What are the reasons? I'm sorry ~ I'm ignorant on the topic, but I'd love to learn more. Why/what are the reasons?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JohnBooty 5y agoGreat blog post from NASA themselves explaining it: https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/01/06/why-doesnt-webb-have-deployment-cameras/ https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/01/06/why-doesnt-webb-have-... the post is really not very long and I would suggest getting it straight from the horse's mouth, but for those not willing to devote a click here are arguably the most relevant bits! "deployment surveillance cameras would not add significant information of value for engineering teams commanding the spacecraft from the ground." "Webb’s built-in sense of ‘touch’ (for example, switches and various mechanical, electrical, and temperature sensors) provides much more useful information than mere surveillance cameras can," said Geithner. "We instrumented Webb like we do many other one-of-a-kind spacecraft, to provide all the specific information necessary to inform engineers on Earth about the observatory’s health and status during all activities."
- amelius 5y agoPerhaps one day they could send a robot mechanic along with the mission, and then a camera could be of value.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoI’m sure if we ever have sufficient technology to build a city on the moon, the first museum exhibit will be a captured JWST
- sandworm101 5y agoNo. The museum will be built atop its first exibit: tranquility base. See Futurama s01e02.
- messe 5y agoFor the sake of correctness, Tranquility Base is not where the museum is built upon in Futurama S01E02; you must be misremembering. In fact, the moon landing site is considered lost at the beginning of that episode. When it's later found in the episode, it's found with the lunar ascent module still attached. Because the astronauts ascended in this module, only the descent modules should be there, so you might at first think that this is a blatant mistake on the part of the writing staff and you might hope someone was fired for that blunder[1]. However, if you pay close attention, there's a plaque behind Leela while she's in the ascent module that states "Lander returned to this site by the Historical Stickler's Society."[2] [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTxw5nQX7SA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTxw5nQX7SA [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/futurama/comments/91kssj/i_didnt_want_to_be_a_stickler_for_historical/ https://www.reddit.com/r/futurama/comments/91kssj/i_didnt_wa...
- sandworm101 5y agoMy bad. I do remember the issue re the assent module, and the sign, but forgot that they escaped into the lander after leaving the dome.
- mikepurvis 5y agoThe book Artemis proposes this also.
- bichiliad 5y agoOne thing they mentioned that kinda sends it home to me is that the telescope is aimed at the dark and away from the sun, and the other side is especially reflective[0]. In other words, one side is too dark to see, and the other is too bright to see. [0]:https://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1479161991252131841 https://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1479161991252131841
- newman8r 5y agoCouldn't they just use an image intensifier tube for night vision? I think they should just stick with the excuse of it being costly and unnecessary.
- Sebb767 5y agoWe're talking about "see the faintest light from stars millions of lightyears away"-dark (for that reason you also can't shine a light on it), with our sun in the background. To see something on that side, you'd basically need the vision capabilities the telescope itself has and that's obviously not going to happen.
- newman8r 5y ago> to see something on that side, you'd basically need the vision capabilities the telescope itself I'm not sure if that's correct - there's a lot of photons hitting the telescope (the night sky), and night vision systems can work off of a relatively small number of photons
- dTal 5y agoIt obviously needs a selfie mirror.
- nullc 5y agoIt has a selfie 'lens': NIRcam has extra optics that can be swung in that allows the camera to focus on the primary mirror instead of out in the great infinity. So in this sense webb is already a camera which can photograph itself! This capability exists for mirror alignment: They'll point webb at an isolated star, switch to focusing on the primary mirror, swap in optics that cause small phase differences to result in diffraction patterns, and then they can use the resulting images to fine tune the positioning of the mirror segments to a small fraction of the wavelength of light that they're using.
- behnamoh 5y agothey could have sent a temporary camera along with the craft to take a picture of it at the final position and send back to earth.
- 14 5y agoHow about a Tesla with Sentry cameras going?
- newaccount2021 5y ago
- heavyset_go 5y agoSounds like that would be expensive with little to no return when it comes to the goals of the mission.
- michaelwilson 5y agoSadly one of the the problems is, it's dark where it is. The mirror side is in complete darkness (because of the sunshield), and the sun side is blazingly bright (because of the reflective sunshield). This is the unfortunate reality of space: The images we see from the Hubble, et al, are exposed for minutes if not hours, and processed to bring out colors invisible to the human eye. An astronaut flying to see the Webb, or one of many other "well known" astronomical landmarks would see either nothing or a faint smudge without a telescope or other enhancements. The aforementioned NASA blog post goes into the many other reasons this wasn't practical.
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
- dev_tty01 5y agoYes, I get all of that, but they still missed an excellent PR opportunity. NASA really could have built some engagement showing images of the deployment process, even if the images wouldn't have direct scientific benefit. Good PR leads to improved funding which leads to more science.
- JohnBooty 5y agoI just want to make sure I understand. Your position is that they should have added significant complexity to a maneuver that was already the most complex of its kind. A maneuver with $10 billion and two decades of work on the line. In order to make the first 30 days of a 10+ year mission marginally more entertaining. You propose this while fully aware that the "entertainment" in question consists of things unfolding in extremely slow motion, in total darkness. I mean, okay. (Thought experiment: when you think about the Hubble, do you think about the day they shoved it out of the shuttle's cargo bay, or do you think about those groundbreaking images it captured during its multidecade mission?)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yreg 5y agoI doubt adding a tiny camera is adding a significant complexity.
- JohnBooty 5y agoI see you haven't read NASA's aforelinked blog post where they explicitly detail the sorts of complexity it would add. Since you've indicated an unwillingness to read the blog post I'll summarize briefly: A camera on the "light" side of JWST would need its own heat shielding and wouldn't show us any of the instruments. A camera on the "dark" side of JWST would need to function at temperatures close to absolute zero. It would somehow need to do this without disturbing the ultrasensitive instruments on the JWST. This would have been needed to be accomplished with, essentially, 10-30 year old technology as the designs for spacecraft like this need to be locked in far ahead of time due to the incredible complexity of deep space launches. In both cases the cameras would need power and data cable routing, and given the various harsh constraints involved (complexity, budget, liftoff weight, size) would have involved compromises in some other area.
- voidfunc 5y agoOnce again scientists miss the entire point. It is about marketing and making people interested. It makes it easier when you go back five years later and ask for more money if people can see the multi-million dollar toy they paid for.
- jibalt 5y agoYeah, scientists are point-missing dummies who think that the images that telescope will produce are of no value next to images of the telescope unfolding. Far better to have internet randos who surely aren't dummies running things.
- repler 5y agoHow often do you look at exterior photos of the Hubble? Secondly, do we collectively as smart people honestly care what the ivermectin crowd thinks about exploring the cosmos?
- SirHound 5y agoIt’s a telescope with a camera stuck to one end. I think people will be able to see what they paid for.
- JohnBooty 5y agoWhen you think of the Hubble, do you think of "product porn" shots of the telescope itself, or the spectacular images and science it produced? Likewise, for Voyager/Cassini/Huygens/etc? Don't remember any selfies from those. We merely had to settle for the spectacular, never-before-seen images of other worlds. Guess they were failures. :-(
- intricatedetail 5y agoWow this sound so patronising. I am sure there will be a moment when they say oh wish we had installed those cameras...
- JohnBooty 5y agoYeah, it seems like NASA hasn't really put much thought into this mission. /s
- luxuryballs 5y agoLooks like there aren’t actually any good reasons. I’m actually kind of surprised that mere curiosity at what could have been seen wasn’t good enough.
- samus 5y agoNothing could have been seen: on the bright side, a smudge of light. On the dark side, nothing. The mirror is currently at -172° C and further cooling down toward absolute zero temperature; even with infrared it's hard to see anything at this point.
- jjtheblunt 5y agoit might be "desense", that the running of electronics of certain sorts near the large detector has the effect of desensitizing it. this is just a guess though.
- trembonator 5y ago
- surfsvammel 5y agoWon't it be pretty close to earth in its final position at L2? If so, is there no chance that there will be future missions to do service to it? If so, maybe we can get a photo of if then?
- wrycoder 5y agoMaybe Hubble could take a snapshot or two?
- frosted-flakes 5y agoWith Hubbles's highest resolution optics, the JWST will be about one-tenth the size of a pixel.
- ddingus 5y agoScale. We are just a bit of noise in an impossible to understand large, complex system. It is crazy to think about.
- idealmedtech 5y agoHow can it make out galaxies at billions of light years away, but not a truck sized craft at a few million miles? I haven't done the math myself, so I'm certain one side of that equation is wrong, but that seems hard to believe!
- dheerendra73 5y agoWell galaxies at billions of light years distance are also 100000s light years wide. Rest of the math you can do about resolution now!
- heavenlyblue 5y agoIt’s interesting that you are expressing an opinion about something that you could calculate in the same amount of time it took to write down that opinion.
- weaksauce 5y agothe plan as i understand it is to have a drone refuel it after about 10 years or so... that might have a camera on it perhaps?
- xvector 5y agoI thought there were no plans for any refuel or repair mission.
- terramex 5y agoThere are no plans at the moment because it is not even clear how long will current fuel supply last. NASA engineer today said "maybe 20 years, roughly speaking", my back-of-napkin math says that it could be up to 30 if everything goes great. It will depend on exact schedule of observations, number of unexpected transient observations and solar activity. Computer simulations of its orbit and solar wind pressure have some error bars that will be corrected once we get solid data. It also has funding for only 5 years of ground operations right now. Once the mission get extended and we have solid understanding of how it behaves in space we could think of designing refuelling mission. It has fuel port so it is possible in principle, but I don't expect any concrete plans within 10 years.
- Ostrogodsky 5y agoYeah, I think that will depend on the scientific quality of the observations provided by JWST: - Hubble/COBE level. Refuel it! - LHC level: Meh, let it rot. Tbf it is less about the device (and the people working on it) and more about what kind of fundamental changes to our understanding of the universe is provided by its observations. BTW I am pretty bullish on that front.
- weaksauce 5y agoI guess the videos I watched made it seem more sure than it is... at the very least they left themselves open to the possibility of it if it makes sense to do.
- samstave 5y agoWhy dont we deploy a smaller sat in the same-ish orbit thats only job is to be the RING Doorbell for the JWST -- all it does is stream a live-stream back of the JWST -- if we can freaking deploy streams of Starlink (SKYNET) devices - we can certainly place tele-photo-capable sats that can then provide streaming video back of the things they are walking -- and they can FN relay off the starlink (SKYNET) devices...
- JshWright 5y agoAll you would be able to see is the sunny side of the sun shield, none of the cool (both literally and figuratively) bits, which are all in darkness.
- samstave 5y agoI have a few questions about extending a tethered "selfie bot" If you have a tethered camera which uses the tether as its power source which is out in front of the scope, wouldn't it be able to "stare" back at the Business Side of the mullet and stream the Party back to earth? Or does a teathered bot risk messing with the orbit of the scope? How much actual pull strength is requireed per kilo to re-orient something in space, meaning: How easily could say an astronaught pull on a cable and change the orientation of an object of much larger mass? What if there were a gyro-ratchet: Gyros that spin, and are tethered to a thing. There are multiple of them and they "yank" a small amount by spinning their gyro/flywheel a bit to initiate a pull... but there are many of these extending off tethers to orient something... What if the tethers are like a flat ribbon cable of super thin solar collecting "flat noodles" - they provide power to the orienting gyros... but how do you untangle things in space if stuff goeas awry... --- Maybe the craft only deploys gyros, via tethers, when it needs alignment - re-pointing... and reels the gyro back in when done... or reels them back out when the tether should use solar to trickle re-charge the gyro battery.
- JshWright 5y agoBut what would the point be? All the interesting bits are in effectively total darkness.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- t8972376723 5y agoMaybe Hubble could be used to take images of it?