4 ms·
Weird nobody mentioned yet, JWST is at L2 (permanently shielded from sun by earth). L2 is not a stable and need correction burns to stay there that's the reason
by me_me_me 5y ago
Weird nobody mentioned yet, JWST is at L2 (permanently shielded from sun by earth). L2 is not a stable and need correction burns to stay there that's the reason for life time of 20 years.
Only stable - self correcting - are L4 and L5 points .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point
- carl_dr 5y agoJWST isn’t in Earth’s shadow - it orbits around L2 (approximately perpendicular to the Sun-Earth axis) at a radius comparable to the Earth-Moon distance. JWST has a huge solar array used to power the electronics on-board. Even if it was stationary at L2, Earth wouldn’t completely shield it from the Sun - the point is too far from Earth/the Sun so large for it to. There is a nice animation on https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html
- me_me_me 5y agoYou are absolutely correct, it even has a massive sun-shield for that :D