(Cape Canaveral) NASA’s new space telescope is about to complete the riskiest part of its mission – deploying and tensioning the heat shield – as NASA ground controllers have solved two issues .
The heat shield of the space telescope James webb, the size of a tennis court, is now fully open and is being tensioned. The operation is expected to be completed by Wednesday.
The telescope, which costs 10 billion and is the largest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever launched, flew on December 25 from French Guiana. Its heat shield and main mirror had to be folded up to enter the European Ariane rocket.
The heat shield is essential for keeping infrared sensing instruments at sub-zero temperatures, which scan the universe for the first stars and galaxies.
The heat shield extension last Friday “was a great achievement for us,” said project manager Bill Ochs. All 107 actuators opened correctly.
But there were some obstacles.
Maryland flight controllers had to reset the solar panel to absorb more energy. The observatory – considered the successor to the aging space telescope Hubble – was never in danger, since it received a constant flow of energy, explained engineer Amy Lo, who works for Northrop Grumman, the telescope’s main contractor.
They also reoriented the telescope to limit sunlight reaching six overheating engines. Those engines have cooled down enough to begin deploying the shield, a three-day process that can be halted if the problem recurs, officials said.
“Everything is back to normal and is going well,” said Mme Lo.
Project manager Ochs expects the rest of the tensioning to go smoothly.
“The best thing that can happen to us is boredom sets in. That’s what we expect for the next three days: boredom, ”he told reporters on a conference call.
If so, the telescope’s gold-plated mirror, which measures more than 6.5 meters in diameter, could deploy as early as this weekend.
Webb is expected to reach its destination, 1.6 million kilometers from Earth, by the end of January. As of Monday, the telescope was more than halfway through.
The telescope uses a detector that guides it with extreme precision and a slitless imager and spectrograph in the near infrared, an instrument that will allow astronomers to observe distant galaxies and study the atmosphere of exoplanets.
Both of these instruments were designed and built in Canada.
In return for its contribution to the telescope, Canada is guaranteed to have at least 5% of the telescope’s observation time, once the data begins to arrive.
The infrared telescope is expected to begin observing the cosmos at the end of June, eventually revealing the first stars and galaxies formed in the universe 13.7 billion years ago. It was barely 100 million years after the Big Bang that created the universe.
Launched in 1990, Hubble, which primarily sees visible light, dates back to 13.4 billion years ago. Astronomers hope to fill this gap with Webb, which is 100 times more powerful.
In other good news on Monday, officials said they expect Webb lasts much longer than the 10 years initially planned, given its energy efficiency.