15 ms·

To my surprise and elation, the Webb Space Telescope is going to work

429 points by wglb 5y ago

mam4 5y ago
jonahbenton 5y ago
Learning about the intricacies of the design and especially the deployment process, and then following the team's incredible badass successes has been one of the most heartwarming and inspiring experiences of this otherwise awful epoch. Bravo, and thank you, and can't wait to see the pictures.
- dnautics 5y ago
  I definitely get this feeling though: "congratulations you skilled superhero bastards, now never do it like this again".
  - ianai 5y ago
    Is it that? Or is it maybe a sign that the current era is a little hyper-critical and in that hyper-criticality lost touch with what's actually possible and acceptable risks? This was no small engineering feat. It's also a good demonstration of the world of the possible.
    - dnautics 5y ago
      Well the delays were a real thing, I don't think it is uncoupled from the engineering methodology
  - lstodd 5y ago
    Seconded.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - salamanderman 5y ago
    There were DARPA-funded projects back in 2004 to try to avoid doing it like this, while it was being built. They were funding investigations into assembling the satellite on orbit, e.g. send up the segments one at a time and dock them together on orbit. Those projects were cancelled in W. Bush's second term after he pushed for manned missions again. To this day, I still think in space assembly would have been cheaper and possibly lower risk.
    - Retric 5y ago
      JWST and most scientific instruments are extreme one offs that take a long time to build and don’t have backup parts. So if anything trying to dock multiple parts in orbit would have likely increased costs and risks. There is a very small risk of a launchpad failure, but sending up multiple launches only increases those risks. Further, building a second one would have been much cheaper though still very expensive.
      - shlurpy 5y ago
        The basic technology of robotic space construction, though, could have far reaching benefits in its own right. So while it may not be strictly better for this one mission, it might still pay put dividends in the long run.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    I think everyone felt that about the skycranes on Mars too (like... both times).
    - dnautics 5y ago
      Were there delays caused by it, though?
      - mikepurvis 5y ago
        I have no idea what the causes were specifically, but Curiosity was over two years late in launching (planned Sept 2009, actual Nov 2011), per: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Mars_Science_Laboratory#Prelaunch_(2004%E2%80%932011) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Mars_Science_Labor...
        Sharlin 5y ago
        When it comes to Mars, though, even if you’re only a month late it will normally result in a 26-month delay due to how often (or rarely) launch windows open for Earth–Mars Hohmann transfers, and this is exactly what happened with Curiosity.
        mturmon 5y ago
        Here's more on why: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1319/1 https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1319/1 TLDR: It was not the EDL [edited to add: entry descent and landing] system, it was the fabrication and integration (putting together) of certain actuators that are used in low temperatures at Mars. People at a contractor, and at JPL, were putting in double shifts and they came within a very close margin of getting it together. Additionally, there were flight software/avionics issues. But if you're set to miss the launch window by even a week, you have to wait for the next one 26 months later.
    - Ma8ee 5y ago
      I was actually surprised (happily) that they succeeded. It just seemed to be too many precise complicated manoeuvres that weren’t allowed to fail.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
prideout 5y ago
I wonder why they chose to focus on HD84406 for calibration. As far as celestial objects go, it doesn't seem very interesting.
- dnautics 5y ago
  You don't want to calibrate against something interesting, because of you see something crazy, you'll never really be all that sure it isn't because your instrument is goofy.
  - not2b 5y ago
    It may be that they don't want to use too bright a star because it would saturate their detectors, so perhaps they picked dim, but not too dim, in the right direction. Edit: the link posted by muds while I was writing this gives the explanation.
  - antognini 5y ago
    Astronomy has long had an issue with this. Back in the late 19th century when the magnitude system was being formalized, an astronomer named Norman Pogson chose Vega to calibrate the system because it is easy to observe in the northern hemisphere. In this system, which came to be the most dominant magnitude system, Vega by definition has a magnitude of 0 in any filter. There turned out to be two issues with this choice. The first is that Vega has a very unusual spectrum for a star. This means that more normal stars appear to have weird differences in their magnitudes between different colors. But it's not the stars themselves that are weird, it's just a weird choice of zero points! A more serious issue became apparent when CCDs became more common in the 1970s and 80s. It turns out that Vega is somewhat variable. You can define the zero point of the magnitude system to be the average brightness over a long period of time, but that doesn't really help you on any given night since the equipment needs to be calibrated daily (or more frequently --- temperature and atmospheric changes require re-calibration). Another source of annoyance here is that Vega is also very bright. This was a benefit in the days of photographic plates. But modern telescopes with CCDs cannot observe such a bright star. It almost immediately. So this makes calibrating the equipment trickier. (You essentially need a two step process where you use a small, specialized device to calibrate against Vega and then measure the flux from a dimmer reference star, and then measure the reference star with your telescope.)
BlueTemplar 5y ago
Heh, I guess all those delays make sense with this kind of feeling of risk - you can bet that they re-checked everything 101 times and any piece that was even suspected of not working 100% as expected was replaced !
- dnautics 5y ago
  Kind of not really, IIRC the motors for the last mirror flaps are not working as they should but it was deemed to be within risk tolerances given a workaround. Also, if I'm not mistaken it is possible for the telescope to operate down some mirrors.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    AFAICT, the reasoning was that opening up the glued-together satellite to replace the broken position sensors would have added more risk of breaking stuff than it would have mitigated in the replacement.
fullstackchris 5y ago
The successful launch (and subsequent deployment steps) that went of without a hitch restored my faith in humanity. I'm so pumped to see what science and images the Webb produces. Could 2022 be the year we find an exoplanet with conclusive biomarkers?
- skybrian 5y ago
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Using the same filter, I'd say non-Boeing engineers. After the 737Max revelations, the fact that they can't figure out why their space capsule doesn't work, etc, I'd be very very concerned for any of their space craft not screwing up after the launch. All of those $numberOfMinutesOfTerror would be excruciating from a Boeing engineered anything at this point.
    - lamontcg 5y ago
      Boeing management, not engineers. And they're probably fine if they're supervised by NASA employees working for the government.
  - pohl 5y ago
    Yeah, that's a bit broad, but citizens who still work towards doing useful things through public policy deserve some recognition, here.
  - stavros 5y ago
    Ah, you know, this is as much humanity's success as global warming is its failure. We built a world that can make both these things.
  - munificent 5y ago
    Here's a funny asymmetry I've started noticing online: * Whenever a person or group do something bad, the response is always, "Look how much humanity sucks." * Whenever a person or group does something good, the response is always, "Look how good those particular people are." Now, there is a positive explanation for this: It's good to give credit. When someone does something particularly good, it diminishes their act to say that it's just another example of humanity. But at the same time, the aggregate effect of this bias is that always appears that humanity sucks with the rare exception of a few blessed individuals. But the opposite is much more likely to be true.
adhesive_wombat 5y ago
Since the JWST design started, there's been a revolution in the "easiness" of launches. I wonder if a future evolution of space telescopes will be some kind of interferometric (obviously extremely hard for IR or visible light, but easier for radio and microwaves) swarm of cheap semi-disposible telescopes than one enormous one. Then you can add to the swarm, upgrade elements, and retire failed elements without having to eat a multi-billion helping of humble pie. And rather than have a fearsomely complex integrated sunshield, you could have a similar swarm of simpler satellites that provide a large cool area at L2, and then the observers just need to handle their own heat. I suppose this could be described as microservices...in spaaaaace. Draw what parallels you will from that!
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  > Since the JWST design started, there's been a revolution in the "easiness" of launches. Producing novel observation platforms is going to be expensive regardless of which platform, because of launch costs. > I wonder if a future evolution of space telescopes will be some kind of interferometric (obviously extremely hard for IR or visible light, but easier for radio and microwaves) swarm of cheap semi-disposible telescopes than one enormous one. With space recovery and repair mission capabilities like https://nexis.gsfc.nasa.gov/osam-1.html https://nexis.gsfc.nasa.gov/osam-1.html growing, a single large asset could be easier to repair than constant refresh. Anyways, small satellites = small sensors. There is a big difference between a projected life of 1-3 years, and a prestige mission with a long lifespan. Hubble has been operating for ~30 years now. > Then you can add to the swarm, upgrade elements, and retire failed elements without having to eat a multi-billion helping of humble pie. Keeping a swarm of space assets ideally situated over time, with proper attitudes and control is a non-trivial problem. Look at Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, that is considered a hard problem. Software solutions don't always translate to hardware.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    "Hubble has been operating for ~30 years now." Right, and the GPS constellation has been active for almost thirty years too. I think the GP is probably right that it would be great if the risk associated with a single mega launch/deployment could be spread over a fleet, but ultimately it does no good if you can't use that configuration to get the observations you want, hence the question. It has less to do with it being a "software solution" and more just whether it would actually practically work. To their point, though, lots of ground-based radio telescopes are now also arrays of many dishes [1], so it's not at all hard to imagine that a similar configuration could be of value in space. [1]: https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/vla/ https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/vla/
tectonic 5y ago
I've been thinking a lot about how much easier this could have been using orbital assembly (crewed or robotic). So, so many human years must have been spent designing and testing deployment mechanisms that simply had to function the first time. In 2019, NASA's Astrophysics Division finished up two years assessing the feasibility of assembling a large-aperture observatory in-space. The In-Space Astronomical Telescope (iSAT) Assembly Design Study [1] concluded that In-Space Assembly (ISA) is the only option for building observatories with aperture diameters over 15 m and would still likely be strongly beneficial for smaller ones like the JWST (6.5 m aperture diameter). Efforts like Northrop Grumman’s successful Mission Extension Vehicles, the upcoming DARPA RSGS and NASA OSAM-1 missions, and the usage of Canadarm2 to install instruments with standardized interfaces on the outside of the ISS all demonstrate the increasing maturity of robotic servicing and assembly. The iSAT study describes a telescope composed of modules with standardized interfaces, launched with a spacecraft bus that has attached Canadarm2-like robotic arms that can assemble and deploy modules delivered by space tug from multiple launches. The benefits over launching monolithic spacecraft with hundreds of single points of failure (cough JWST cough) are clear: the mission won’t be limited by a single launch vehicle’s lift ability or fairing size; the same inchworming robotic arm that does initial ISA can later perform repairs and upgrades, either with freshly delivered replacement modules or by debugging malfunctioning parts (see Mars Insight); the final deployed structure doesn’t need to be designed to handle harsh launch conditions; and, design and development will be faster without needing to design and test super reliable deployment mechanisms—if a part fails during orbital checkout, launch a replacement. The primary challenge is designing hardware that today’s limited-dexterity robotics can manipulate, and figuring out supervised autonomy with fallback telerobotics for bringing humans into the loop when needed. There are definitely challenges, but this feels like the right approach. If you could do it near a crewed station for infrequent debugging EVAs, even better. After it's assembled, raise the orbit to L2 with solar electric propulsion. [1] https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exep/technology/in-space-assembly/iSAT_study/ https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exep/technology/in-space-assembl... I'll be writing about this more in Orbital Index (https://orbitalindex.com https://orbitalindex.com) sometime soon.
- vkou 5y ago
  The difference between automated deployment mechanisms and robotic[1] orbital assembly is that we have ~60 years of experience doing the former, whereas the latter is a completely brand-new, zero-experience field. It would be good to develop that capability, but maybe do some trial runs on assembling something a little smaller, and less critical? [1] Human orbital assembly of the JWST is not possible, because we do not have any crewed vehicles that can make the trip.
The_rationalist 5y ago
The terrestrial planet finder or any other optical telescope would have been much more revolutionary for fascinating humans with unbelievably pretty pictures
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  JWST isn't build to fascinate humans with unbelievably pretty pictures, it's build to better understand the early years of the universe.
  - The_rationalist 5y ago
- outworlder 5y ago
  > or any other optical telescope would have been much more revolutionary Why? JWST is pretty damn revolutionary. There's only so much you can see with visible light. You really want old and far away stuff, go infrared.
  - svachalek 5y ago
    I saw on one of NASA's videos, an astronomer also commented that many of the bio-signature gases they would look for in exoplanet atmospheres are also best seen in the infrared. There's going to be a lot of interesting research coming out of this.
    - The_rationalist 5y ago
geertj 5y ago
Now that we've shown that we can do this (we = humankind), I wonder what's needed to scale up the JWST design by 10x or 100x or 1000x...
dylan604 5y ago
"Hubble Hugger" is such an amazing nickname!
divbzero 5y ago
Do we have a rough estimate of what the probability of failure was?
zokier 5y ago
I celebrate when I see first images come out. Feels premature to now say that it is going to work. How long did it take until we noticed and understood the flaws of Hubble?
- unlog 5y ago
  That's an overly negative comment for a project that yourself said learned from Hubble mistakes. They are exactly trying to avoid Hubble mistakes by being able to correct mirrors in absurd units, and much more. I get the idea that failure levels are so high that "everyone" get a drug shot from them. I just expected better. Hope, if you wanna call it in some way, with evidence that indicates that things are going good.
  - zokier 5y ago
    JWST is awesome, and I'm hoping the best success for it. My negativity was aimed at the article jinxing it
AceJohnny2 5y ago
I'm really waiting for @foone's reaction. foone is a retro hardware hacker who goes on these amazing threads on twitter, and is famous for running Doom on various things, including a pregnancy tester (though admittedly by replacing most of the internals), and his "Carthago delenda est" was on how the JWST was a boondoggle.
- enkid 5y ago
  I mean, of course it's a boondoggle? Isn't everything NASA does, outside of maybe climate science, a boondoggle? There was no real reason to put someone on the moon or build a space station. The Hubble has taken some pretty pictures, but doesn't really make people's live better in a measurable way. There's really no reason to want to see if you can fly a helicopter on Mars. The point is to do something challenging and cool and get some funding for science that isn't directly related to the military.
  - mturmon 5y ago
    Increasingly, there are applications for NASA science data taken about the Earth: https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov Some of that webpage is a bit fluffy for the HN audience, but trust me, look underneath and there's a lot of real stuff there. For example, GRACE measures groundwater (https://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/applications/groundwater/ https://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/applications/groundwater/) and has been the main source of information about fast-depleting aquifers in India and California. Probably the best measurements we have of whole-atmosphere CO2 (as opposed to in-situ point measurements) come from Earth remote sensing (https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov) -- you're right though, that is climate-related. Another one to take note of is MAIA (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/multi-angle-imager-for-aerosols-maia https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/multi-angle-imager-for-aer...), which will measure PM2.5/PM10 over various cities.
  - AceJohnny2 5y ago
    There are various thresholds of boondoggle. The doubt was whether the money invested in JWST could have been better invested in other discovery science projects of the same category as JWST.
aklemm 5y ago
What are the best write-ups about the whole mission?
- peletiah 5y ago
  @marinakoren's articles on The Atlantic give a good insight, imo.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  NASA's and the Space Telescope Science Institute's own documents, the more technical ones. There's almost no need to read anything else. https://www.stsci.edu/ https://www.stsci.edu/
misotaur 5y ago
So now that Webb is on its way what is the next Nasa telescope?
- T-A 5y ago
  https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25233640-700-3-of-the-most-exciting-space-telescopes-planned-for-launch-by-2034/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25233640-700-3-of-the... Item #2 in that list: https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/ https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/
mikewarot 5y ago
They should have at least built 2 of them. It wouldn't have made it that much more expensive, and there'd be a backup.
- merlincorey 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure they will have built a duplicate or two to keep on earth as essentially a staging / testing environment. My understanding is this is absolutely the case with the Mars Rovers which have engineering versions here on Earth such as this one: https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8749/nasa-readies-perseverance-mars-rovers-earthly-twin/ https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8749/nasa-readies-perseverance-ma...
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  Ah yes, Cosmos-style. I'm not sure it "wouldn't have been that much more expensive" though. Building and testing these things takes a lot of effort, time, and thus, money. Even at just 5% of the costs we're talking about almost $500 million (and it would likely be much more than just 5%).
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  A significant chunk of money and most of the time was spent on testing everything conceivable. Manufacturing a second one is indeed much cheaper, but would probably not be the main cost at that point.
secondaryacct 5y ago
His compliment of Ariane 5 tingles my French pride. So annoyed when watching the launch live to see all the ameritards in youtube chat saying "what why is it not spacex" grrr. And we did it for free to boot. Elon "Electric Jesus" Musk only does it as a business model. He'll never do important national stuff that go beyond budget efficiency.
- callamdelaney 5y ago
  Ironically spacex is most likely to provide a budget friendly route to space on an industrial scale - and is already cutting costs by a significant amount. Only reason they used the Ariene 5 was because of its width. edit: its payload width*
  - olex 5y ago
    Not even that - the Falcon 9/Heavy fairing is the same width on the inside as Ariane 5, only the exterior is narrower (but the walls are thinner). The rocket simply didn't exist at the time when JWST was designed, and changing the launcher for a project of this complexity years after the design and build started wasn't even considered, understandably. But it will be very different for future projects.
    - callamdelaney 5y ago
      Yes, as I understand the Ariane 5 was the widest reliable launch vehicle available at the time. Obviously trying to fold the telescope into a smaller space would have introduced even more complexity so they chose it - changing later would have added delays and additional complexity!
      - panick21_ 5y ago
        It has nothing to do with reliability or space. Its political. ESA put in the budget for the launch and they got a significant part of the science in return. And ESA of course put it on Ariane 5. There was no competition or comparison or any of that. Since then the price of the rocket has gone from like 20%+ to like 2% or less of the cost. But they will still get the science. So all in all, might be the best investment anybody has ever made in terms of a science project. The Delta 4, Delta 4H and Atlas 5 would all have been fully qualified to fly the JW and likely could all have launched it. Maybe the Atlas 5 is to small but there were certainty rocket in the US that had the required certification from NASA.
biesnecker 5y ago
It's a little nuts to me how many articles cite the $10 billion price tag as astronomical when we spent that in maybe 2 weeks during the peak of the Iraq War, and for what?
- kaesar14 5y ago
  I had the same feeling. That’s a rounding error in some of the recent things America has spent money on like the infra bill and CARES act.
  - beefok 5y ago
    Yeah and when it is calculated over the period of time it was dispensed, that is hilariously cheap. The defense budget for 2022 in USA is $768 billion for just one year. The budget for the entire development of the telescope was 1.351351% of that budget.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - vikingerik 5y ago
    It's a rounding error compared to those, but it's not to the taxpayer. $10 billion split among roughly 100 million net-tax-paying Americans comes to $100 each. How many taxpayers would rather have an extra $100 than a space telescope?
    - avar 5y ago
      America doesn't have a poll taxation system, what's the spread on that $100 if it's adjusted for progressive taxation?
    - vvillena 5y ago
      That's a moot argument. We can use the Iraq war instead and do that same math, amounting to $11000 per tax payer. Government budgets are well spent when they are used to do things that are impossible, unfeasible or unwise to do by individual people. JWST is a science investment, which is one of the wisest ways to spend public money.
kloch 5y ago
> During this process, scientists will use a Sun-like star named HD84406 to focus the mirrors Here is a 1 degree wide view of the neighborhood around HD84406 rendered from Gaia EDR3 data: https://bsrender.io/sample_renderings/hd84406-1deg-m18-ax1000-ao127-2k.png https://bsrender.io/sample_renderings/hd84406-1deg-m18-ax100... Not too many other stars around, and none that are brighter than it within almost a half degree radius. If I zoomed in to the 0.0367 degree FOV of Webb's NirCam instrument, we would only see one other very faint ~21 mag star. However, Webb (and Hubble) can see much fainter stars than Gaia.
- prideout 5y ago
  This bsrender.io thing looks really neat. Looks like it can render the Milky Way purely from individual stars? Wow.
_8j50 5y ago
Can we have a space station at L2? That'd be awesome. I am sorry but if I make it big like Elon I will be moving to L2. Take WFH to a new level.
- oneoff786 5y ago
  Space is pretty bad for you. Would not recommend.
  - RotaryTelephone 5y ago
    Exactly, from radiation to muscle loss - humans are simply not meant to live in space. BUT - it doesn't mean we won't eventually, especially if forced off Earth due to some human made or natural catastrophy. Humans may need to evolve for space living though. It may take many generations of evolution and adaptation and natural selection.
  - _8j50 5y ago
    Maybe I will vacation back to lowly earth once in a while :) . But seriously, astronauts do up to a year fine right? Has anyone gotten seriously ill or died? I've heard of bone density loss, but do you really need dense bones if you will not come back to earth?
    - zizee 5y ago
      The ISS is in a low enough orbit that it is protected by the earths magnetosphere.
    - oneoff786 5y ago
      Radiation, space anemia, immune system issues, and probably a lot of other things we would know more about if people stayed in space longer. Your body is built to expect gravity to pull blood down. The circulatory system thus pushes blood up. When in space this creates problems.
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  Enjoy your 10 second round trip time to earth. Hope you're not required to log in via remote desktop! :)
mbrodersen 5y ago
I feel the same. The complexity of the project, and the number of failure points, makes it hard to believe that nothing major has gone wrong so far. I hope the good luck continues!
wolverine876 5y ago
> I can only imagine the utter delight of astronomers, physicists, and scientists who have worked directly on this project. Bravo to you all. Perhaps Berger should also credit the engineers, team leaders, administrators, etc. who proved Berger wrong, and the American, European, and Canadian citizens who had enough vision to fund it.
- jrumbut 5y ago
  Gotta really appreciate everyone that put in the effort to make this particular project not a horrific, graphic failure. Of course the science returns haven't come in yet and there's still plenty to go wrong but at least it got off the ground and unfolded. This was a lot of money for some very pure science. If it had blown up on the launch pad (a French launch pad, where government employees were presumably paid to be on a tropical island in December) it would have been Exhibit A in the case against government funding of science for the next 50 years.
  - baud147258 5y ago
    the French launch pad isn't on an island, but rather in the continental South America, at the start of the rain season, so it's not exactly my type of dream posting
topspin 5y ago
It has been an amazing performance. In my mind the highest risk remaining with JWST is the cryogenic system. Cryogenics can never be taken for granted and Northrop Grumman struggled with the design of the JWST cryogenic system for years. That's because it is a complex, high spec system that continuously and uniformly cools the entire reflector.
ganzuul 5y ago
Watching this and considering where we are right now gave me chills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSqTKvFGz3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSqTKvFGz3c
- okamiueru 5y ago
  Are you commenting in the correct thread? I failed to see the connection.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    Yes, it went where it was supposed to. :) WH40k is a little bit obscure, but the gist of it is that JWST is designed as an instrument of cosmic revelation. The knowledge it will bring us will shape the future of thought. If you don't have any spiritual life this might seem meaningless...
blable2 5y ago
I felt the very same way due to the same reasons in the story.

429 points by wglb 5y ago

mam4 5y ago

Learning about the intricacies of the design and especially the deployment process, and then following the team's incredible badass successes has been one of the most heartwarming and inspiring experiences of this otherwise awful epoch. Bravo, and thank you, and can't wait to see the pictures.

dnautics 5y ago
I definitely get this feeling though: "congratulations you skilled superhero bastards, now never do it like this again".
- ianai 5y ago
  Is it that? Or is it maybe a sign that the current era is a little hyper-critical and in that hyper-criticality lost touch with what's actually possible and acceptable risks? This was no small engineering feat. It's also a good demonstration of the world of the possible.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Well the delays were a real thing, I don't think it is uncoupled from the engineering methodology
- lstodd 5y ago
  Seconded.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- salamanderman 5y ago
  There were DARPA-funded projects back in 2004 to try to avoid doing it like this, while it was being built. They were funding investigations into assembling the satellite on orbit, e.g. send up the segments one at a time and dock them together on orbit. Those projects were cancelled in W. Bush's second term after he pushed for manned missions again. To this day, I still think in space assembly would have been cheaper and possibly lower risk.
  - Retric 5y ago
    JWST and most scientific instruments are extreme one offs that take a long time to build and don’t have backup parts. So if anything trying to dock multiple parts in orbit would have likely increased costs and risks. There is a very small risk of a launchpad failure, but sending up multiple launches only increases those risks. Further, building a second one would have been much cheaper though still very expensive.
    - shlurpy 5y ago
      The basic technology of robotic space construction, though, could have far reaching benefits in its own right. So while it may not be strictly better for this one mission, it might still pay put dividends in the long run.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  I think everyone felt that about the skycranes on Mars too (like... both times).
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Were there delays caused by it, though?
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      I have no idea what the causes were specifically, but Curiosity was over two years late in launching (planned Sept 2009, actual Nov 2011), per: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Mars_Science_Laboratory#Prelaunch_(2004%E2%80%932011) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Mars_Science_Labor...
      - Sharlin 5y ago
        When it comes to Mars, though, even if you’re only a month late it will normally result in a 26-month delay due to how often (or rarely) launch windows open for Earth–Mars Hohmann transfers, and this is exactly what happened with Curiosity.
      - mturmon 5y ago
        Here's more on why: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1319/1 https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1319/1 TLDR: It was not the EDL [edited to add: entry descent and landing] system, it was the fabrication and integration (putting together) of certain actuators that are used in low temperatures at Mars. People at a contractor, and at JPL, were putting in double shifts and they came within a very close margin of getting it together. Additionally, there were flight software/avionics issues. But if you're set to miss the launch window by even a week, you have to wait for the next one 26 months later.
  - Ma8ee 5y ago
    I was actually surprised (happily) that they succeeded. It just seemed to be too many precise complicated manoeuvres that weren’t allowed to fail.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

prideout 5y ago

I wonder why they chose to focus on HD84406 for calibration. As far as celestial objects go, it doesn't seem very interesting.

dnautics 5y ago
You don't want to calibrate against something interesting, because of you see something crazy, you'll never really be all that sure it isn't because your instrument is goofy.
- not2b 5y ago
  It may be that they don't want to use too bright a star because it would saturate their detectors, so perhaps they picked dim, but not too dim, in the right direction. Edit: the link posted by muds while I was writing this gives the explanation.
- antognini 5y ago
  Astronomy has long had an issue with this. Back in the late 19th century when the magnitude system was being formalized, an astronomer named Norman Pogson chose Vega to calibrate the system because it is easy to observe in the northern hemisphere. In this system, which came to be the most dominant magnitude system, Vega by definition has a magnitude of 0 in any filter. There turned out to be two issues with this choice. The first is that Vega has a very unusual spectrum for a star. This means that more normal stars appear to have weird differences in their magnitudes between different colors. But it's not the stars themselves that are weird, it's just a weird choice of zero points! A more serious issue became apparent when CCDs became more common in the 1970s and 80s. It turns out that Vega is somewhat variable. You can define the zero point of the magnitude system to be the average brightness over a long period of time, but that doesn't really help you on any given night since the equipment needs to be calibrated daily (or more frequently --- temperature and atmospheric changes require re-calibration). Another source of annoyance here is that Vega is also very bright. This was a benefit in the days of photographic plates. But modern telescopes with CCDs cannot observe such a bright star. It almost immediately. So this makes calibrating the equipment trickier. (You essentially need a two step process where you use a small, specialized device to calibrate against Vega and then measure the flux from a dimmer reference star, and then measure the reference star with your telescope.)

BlueTemplar 5y ago

Heh, I guess all those delays make sense with this kind of feeling of risk - you can bet that they re-checked everything 101 times and any piece that was even suspected of not working 100% as expected was replaced !

dnautics 5y ago
Kind of not really, IIRC the motors for the last mirror flaps are not working as they should but it was deemed to be within risk tolerances given a workaround. Also, if I'm not mistaken it is possible for the telescope to operate down some mirrors.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  AFAICT, the reasoning was that opening up the glued-together satellite to replace the broken position sensors would have added more risk of breaking stuff than it would have mitigated in the replacement.

fullstackchris 5y ago

The successful launch (and subsequent deployment steps) that went of without a hitch restored my faith in humanity. I'm so pumped to see what science and images the Webb produces. Could 2022 be the year we find an exoplanet with conclusive biomarkers?

skybrian 5y ago
- dylan604 5y ago
  Using the same filter, I'd say non-Boeing engineers. After the 737Max revelations, the fact that they can't figure out why their space capsule doesn't work, etc, I'd be very very concerned for any of their space craft not screwing up after the launch. All of those $numberOfMinutesOfTerror would be excruciating from a Boeing engineered anything at this point.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    Boeing management, not engineers. And they're probably fine if they're supervised by NASA employees working for the government.
- pohl 5y ago
  Yeah, that's a bit broad, but citizens who still work towards doing useful things through public policy deserve some recognition, here.
- stavros 5y ago
  Ah, you know, this is as much humanity's success as global warming is its failure. We built a world that can make both these things.
- munificent 5y ago
  Here's a funny asymmetry I've started noticing online: * Whenever a person or group do something bad, the response is always, "Look how much humanity sucks." * Whenever a person or group does something good, the response is always, "Look how good those particular people are." Now, there is a positive explanation for this: It's good to give credit. When someone does something particularly good, it diminishes their act to say that it's just another example of humanity. But at the same time, the aggregate effect of this bias is that always appears that humanity sucks with the rare exception of a few blessed individuals. But the opposite is much more likely to be true.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago

Since the JWST design started, there's been a revolution in the "easiness" of launches. I wonder if a future evolution of space telescopes will be some kind of interferometric (obviously extremely hard for IR or visible light, but easier for radio and microwaves) swarm of cheap semi-disposible telescopes than one enormous one. Then you can add to the swarm, upgrade elements, and retire failed elements without having to eat a multi-billion helping of humble pie. And rather than have a fearsomely complex integrated sunshield, you could have a similar swarm of simpler satellites that provide a large cool area at L2, and then the observers just need to handle their own heat. I suppose this could be described as microservices...in spaaaaace. Draw what parallels you will from that!

OrvalWintermute 5y ago
> Since the JWST design started, there's been a revolution in the "easiness" of launches. Producing novel observation platforms is going to be expensive regardless of which platform, because of launch costs. > I wonder if a future evolution of space telescopes will be some kind of interferometric (obviously extremely hard for IR or visible light, but easier for radio and microwaves) swarm of cheap semi-disposible telescopes than one enormous one. With space recovery and repair mission capabilities like https://nexis.gsfc.nasa.gov/osam-1.html https://nexis.gsfc.nasa.gov/osam-1.html growing, a single large asset could be easier to repair than constant refresh. Anyways, small satellites = small sensors. There is a big difference between a projected life of 1-3 years, and a prestige mission with a long lifespan. Hubble has been operating for ~30 years now. > Then you can add to the swarm, upgrade elements, and retire failed elements without having to eat a multi-billion helping of humble pie. Keeping a swarm of space assets ideally situated over time, with proper attitudes and control is a non-trivial problem. Look at Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, that is considered a hard problem. Software solutions don't always translate to hardware.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  "Hubble has been operating for ~30 years now." Right, and the GPS constellation has been active for almost thirty years too. I think the GP is probably right that it would be great if the risk associated with a single mega launch/deployment could be spread over a fleet, but ultimately it does no good if you can't use that configuration to get the observations you want, hence the question. It has less to do with it being a "software solution" and more just whether it would actually practically work. To their point, though, lots of ground-based radio telescopes are now also arrays of many dishes [1], so it's not at all hard to imagine that a similar configuration could be of value in space. [1]: https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/vla/ https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/vla/

tectonic 5y ago

I've been thinking a lot about how much easier this could have been using orbital assembly (crewed or robotic). So, so many human years must have been spent designing and testing deployment mechanisms that simply had to function the first time. In 2019, NASA's Astrophysics Division finished up two years assessing the feasibility of assembling a large-aperture observatory in-space. The In-Space Astronomical Telescope (iSAT) Assembly Design Study [1] concluded that In-Space Assembly (ISA) is the only option for building observatories with aperture diameters over 15 m and would still likely be strongly beneficial for smaller ones like the JWST (6.5 m aperture diameter). Efforts like Northrop Grumman’s successful Mission Extension Vehicles, the upcoming DARPA RSGS and NASA OSAM-1 missions, and the usage of Canadarm2 to install instruments with standardized interfaces on the outside of the ISS all demonstrate the increasing maturity of robotic servicing and assembly. The iSAT study describes a telescope composed of modules with standardized interfaces, launched with a spacecraft bus that has attached Canadarm2-like robotic arms that can assemble and deploy modules delivered by space tug from multiple launches. The benefits over launching monolithic spacecraft with hundreds of single points of failure (cough JWST cough) are clear: the mission won’t be limited by a single launch vehicle’s lift ability or fairing size; the same inchworming robotic arm that does initial ISA can later perform repairs and upgrades, either with freshly delivered replacement modules or by debugging malfunctioning parts (see Mars Insight); the final deployed structure doesn’t need to be designed to handle harsh launch conditions; and, design and development will be faster without needing to design and test super reliable deployment mechanisms—if a part fails during orbital checkout, launch a replacement. The primary challenge is designing hardware that today’s limited-dexterity robotics can manipulate, and figuring out supervised autonomy with fallback telerobotics for bringing humans into the loop when needed. There are definitely challenges, but this feels like the right approach. If you could do it near a crewed station for infrequent debugging EVAs, even better. After it's assembled, raise the orbit to L2 with solar electric propulsion. [1] https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exep/technology/in-space-assembly/iSAT_study/ https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exep/technology/in-space-assembl... I'll be writing about this more in Orbital Index (https://orbitalindex.com https://orbitalindex.com) sometime soon.

vkou 5y ago
The difference between automated deployment mechanisms and robotic[1] orbital assembly is that we have ~60 years of experience doing the former, whereas the latter is a completely brand-new, zero-experience field. It would be good to develop that capability, but maybe do some trial runs on assembling something a little smaller, and less critical? [1] Human orbital assembly of the JWST is not possible, because we do not have any crewed vehicles that can make the trip.

The_rationalist 5y ago

The terrestrial planet finder or any other optical telescope would have been much more revolutionary for fascinating humans with unbelievably pretty pictures

Denvercoder9 5y ago
JWST isn't build to fascinate humans with unbelievably pretty pictures, it's build to better understand the early years of the universe.
- The_rationalist 5y ago
outworlder 5y ago
> or any other optical telescope would have been much more revolutionary Why? JWST is pretty damn revolutionary. There's only so much you can see with visible light. You really want old and far away stuff, go infrared.
- svachalek 5y ago
  I saw on one of NASA's videos, an astronomer also commented that many of the bio-signature gases they would look for in exoplanet atmospheres are also best seen in the infrared. There's going to be a lot of interesting research coming out of this.
  - The_rationalist 5y ago

geertj 5y ago

Now that we've shown that we can do this (we = humankind), I wonder what's needed to scale up the JWST design by 10x or 100x or 1000x...

dylan604 5y ago

"Hubble Hugger" is such an amazing nickname!

divbzero 5y ago

Do we have a rough estimate of what the probability of failure was?

zokier 5y ago

I celebrate when I see first images come out. Feels premature to now say that it is going to work. How long did it take until we noticed and understood the flaws of Hubble?

unlog 5y ago
That's an overly negative comment for a project that yourself said learned from Hubble mistakes. They are exactly trying to avoid Hubble mistakes by being able to correct mirrors in absurd units, and much more. I get the idea that failure levels are so high that "everyone" get a drug shot from them. I just expected better. Hope, if you wanna call it in some way, with evidence that indicates that things are going good.
- zokier 5y ago
  JWST is awesome, and I'm hoping the best success for it. My negativity was aimed at the article jinxing it

AceJohnny2 5y ago

I'm really waiting for @foone's reaction. foone is a retro hardware hacker who goes on these amazing threads on twitter, and is famous for running Doom on various things, including a pregnancy tester (though admittedly by replacing most of the internals), and his "Carthago delenda est" was on how the JWST was a boondoggle.

enkid 5y ago
I mean, of course it's a boondoggle? Isn't everything NASA does, outside of maybe climate science, a boondoggle? There was no real reason to put someone on the moon or build a space station. The Hubble has taken some pretty pictures, but doesn't really make people's live better in a measurable way. There's really no reason to want to see if you can fly a helicopter on Mars. The point is to do something challenging and cool and get some funding for science that isn't directly related to the military.
- mturmon 5y ago
  Increasingly, there are applications for NASA science data taken about the Earth: https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov Some of that webpage is a bit fluffy for the HN audience, but trust me, look underneath and there's a lot of real stuff there. For example, GRACE measures groundwater (https://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/applications/groundwater/ https://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/applications/groundwater/) and has been the main source of information about fast-depleting aquifers in India and California. Probably the best measurements we have of whole-atmosphere CO2 (as opposed to in-situ point measurements) come from Earth remote sensing (https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov) -- you're right though, that is climate-related. Another one to take note of is MAIA (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/multi-angle-imager-for-aerosols-maia https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/multi-angle-imager-for-aer...), which will measure PM2.5/PM10 over various cities.
- AceJohnny2 5y ago
  There are various thresholds of boondoggle. The doubt was whether the money invested in JWST could have been better invested in other discovery science projects of the same category as JWST.

aklemm 5y ago

What are the best write-ups about the whole mission?

peletiah 5y ago
@marinakoren's articles on The Atlantic give a good insight, imo.
wolverine876 5y ago
NASA's and the Space Telescope Science Institute's own documents, the more technical ones. There's almost no need to read anything else. https://www.stsci.edu/ https://www.stsci.edu/

misotaur 5y ago

So now that Webb is on its way what is the next Nasa telescope?

T-A 5y ago
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25233640-700-3-of-the-most-exciting-space-telescopes-planned-for-launch-by-2034/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25233640-700-3-of-the... Item #2 in that list: https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/ https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/

mikewarot 5y ago

They should have at least built 2 of them. It wouldn't have made it that much more expensive, and there'd be a backup.

merlincorey 5y ago
I'm pretty sure they will have built a duplicate or two to keep on earth as essentially a staging / testing environment. My understanding is this is absolutely the case with the Mars Rovers which have engineering versions here on Earth such as this one: https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8749/nasa-readies-perseverance-mars-rovers-earthly-twin/ https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8749/nasa-readies-perseverance-ma...
Beltalowda 5y ago
Ah yes, Cosmos-style. I'm not sure it "wouldn't have been that much more expensive" though. Building and testing these things takes a lot of effort, time, and thus, money. Even at just 5% of the costs we're talking about almost $500 million (and it would likely be much more than just 5%).
MauranKilom 5y ago
A significant chunk of money and most of the time was spent on testing everything conceivable. Manufacturing a second one is indeed much cheaper, but would probably not be the main cost at that point.

secondaryacct 5y ago

His compliment of Ariane 5 tingles my French pride. So annoyed when watching the launch live to see all the ameritards in youtube chat saying "what why is it not spacex" grrr. And we did it for free to boot. Elon "Electric Jesus" Musk only does it as a business model. He'll never do important national stuff that go beyond budget efficiency.

callamdelaney 5y ago
Ironically spacex is most likely to provide a budget friendly route to space on an industrial scale - and is already cutting costs by a significant amount. Only reason they used the Ariene 5 was because of its width. edit: its payload width*
- olex 5y ago
  Not even that - the Falcon 9/Heavy fairing is the same width on the inside as Ariane 5, only the exterior is narrower (but the walls are thinner). The rocket simply didn't exist at the time when JWST was designed, and changing the launcher for a project of this complexity years after the design and build started wasn't even considered, understandably. But it will be very different for future projects.
  - callamdelaney 5y ago
    Yes, as I understand the Ariane 5 was the widest reliable launch vehicle available at the time. Obviously trying to fold the telescope into a smaller space would have introduced even more complexity so they chose it - changing later would have added delays and additional complexity!
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      It has nothing to do with reliability or space. Its political. ESA put in the budget for the launch and they got a significant part of the science in return. And ESA of course put it on Ariane 5. There was no competition or comparison or any of that. Since then the price of the rocket has gone from like 20%+ to like 2% or less of the cost. But they will still get the science. So all in all, might be the best investment anybody has ever made in terms of a science project. The Delta 4, Delta 4H and Atlas 5 would all have been fully qualified to fly the JW and likely could all have launched it. Maybe the Atlas 5 is to small but there were certainty rocket in the US that had the required certification from NASA.

biesnecker 5y ago

It's a little nuts to me how many articles cite the $10 billion price tag as astronomical when we spent that in maybe 2 weeks during the peak of the Iraq War, and for what?

kaesar14 5y ago
I had the same feeling. That’s a rounding error in some of the recent things America has spent money on like the infra bill and CARES act.
- beefok 5y ago
  Yeah and when it is calculated over the period of time it was dispensed, that is hilariously cheap. The defense budget for 2022 in USA is $768 billion for just one year. The budget for the entire development of the telescope was 1.351351% of that budget.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- vikingerik 5y ago
  It's a rounding error compared to those, but it's not to the taxpayer. $10 billion split among roughly 100 million net-tax-paying Americans comes to $100 each. How many taxpayers would rather have an extra $100 than a space telescope?
  - avar 5y ago
    America doesn't have a poll taxation system, what's the spread on that $100 if it's adjusted for progressive taxation?
  - vvillena 5y ago
    That's a moot argument. We can use the Iraq war instead and do that same math, amounting to $11000 per tax payer. Government budgets are well spent when they are used to do things that are impossible, unfeasible or unwise to do by individual people. JWST is a science investment, which is one of the wisest ways to spend public money.

kloch 5y ago

> During this process, scientists will use a Sun-like star named HD84406 to focus the mirrors Here is a 1 degree wide view of the neighborhood around HD84406 rendered from Gaia EDR3 data: https://bsrender.io/sample_renderings/hd84406-1deg-m18-ax1000-ao127-2k.png https://bsrender.io/sample_renderings/hd84406-1deg-m18-ax100... Not too many other stars around, and none that are brighter than it within almost a half degree radius. If I zoomed in to the 0.0367 degree FOV of Webb's NirCam instrument, we would only see one other very faint ~21 mag star. However, Webb (and Hubble) can see much fainter stars than Gaia.

prideout 5y ago
This bsrender.io thing looks really neat. Looks like it can render the Milky Way purely from individual stars? Wow.

_8j50 5y ago

Can we have a space station at L2? That'd be awesome. I am sorry but if I make it big like Elon I will be moving to L2. Take WFH to a new level.

oneoff786 5y ago
Space is pretty bad for you. Would not recommend.
- RotaryTelephone 5y ago
  Exactly, from radiation to muscle loss - humans are simply not meant to live in space. BUT - it doesn't mean we won't eventually, especially if forced off Earth due to some human made or natural catastrophy. Humans may need to evolve for space living though. It may take many generations of evolution and adaptation and natural selection.
- _8j50 5y ago
  Maybe I will vacation back to lowly earth once in a while :) . But seriously, astronauts do up to a year fine right? Has anyone gotten seriously ill or died? I've heard of bone density loss, but do you really need dense bones if you will not come back to earth?
  - zizee 5y ago
    The ISS is in a low enough orbit that it is protected by the earths magnetosphere.
  - oneoff786 5y ago
    Radiation, space anemia, immune system issues, and probably a lot of other things we would know more about if people stayed in space longer. Your body is built to expect gravity to pull blood down. The circulatory system thus pushes blood up. When in space this creates problems.
MauranKilom 5y ago
Enjoy your 10 second round trip time to earth. Hope you're not required to log in via remote desktop! :)

mbrodersen 5y ago

I feel the same. The complexity of the project, and the number of failure points, makes it hard to believe that nothing major has gone wrong so far. I hope the good luck continues!

wolverine876 5y ago

> I can only imagine the utter delight of astronomers, physicists, and scientists who have worked directly on this project. Bravo to you all. Perhaps Berger should also credit the engineers, team leaders, administrators, etc. who proved Berger wrong, and the American, European, and Canadian citizens who had enough vision to fund it.

jrumbut 5y ago
Gotta really appreciate everyone that put in the effort to make this particular project not a horrific, graphic failure. Of course the science returns haven't come in yet and there's still plenty to go wrong but at least it got off the ground and unfolded. This was a lot of money for some very pure science. If it had blown up on the launch pad (a French launch pad, where government employees were presumably paid to be on a tropical island in December) it would have been Exhibit A in the case against government funding of science for the next 50 years.
- baud147258 5y ago
  the French launch pad isn't on an island, but rather in the continental South America, at the start of the rain season, so it's not exactly my type of dream posting

topspin 5y ago

It has been an amazing performance. In my mind the highest risk remaining with JWST is the cryogenic system. Cryogenics can never be taken for granted and Northrop Grumman struggled with the design of the JWST cryogenic system for years. That's because it is a complex, high spec system that continuously and uniformly cools the entire reflector.

ganzuul 5y ago

Watching this and considering where we are right now gave me chills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSqTKvFGz3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSqTKvFGz3c

okamiueru 5y ago
Are you commenting in the correct thread? I failed to see the connection.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  Yes, it went where it was supposed to. :) WH40k is a little bit obscure, but the gist of it is that JWST is designed as an instrument of cosmic revelation. The knowledge it will bring us will shape the future of thought. If you don't have any spiritual life this might seem meaningless...

blable2 5y ago

I felt the very same way due to the same reasons in the story.