The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/jwst/news.asp

by guerrilla • 5 years ago

411 291 5 years ago

asc-csa.gc.ca

baggy_trough• 5 years ago

Going to be amazing if this thing can actually unfurl, but I'm scared.

tleilaxu• 5 years ago

Same feelings here!

Ever since it was announced I have been anxious about it all going to plan.

Sometimes I put myself in the shoes of the engineers and controllers, and I can’t imagine how nerve wracking it must be, waiting and waiting!

The thing could simply blow up on the launch pad, for goodness sake!

holler• 5 years ago

The thing could simply blow up on the launch pad, for goodness sake!

exactly, I’ve wondered why they don’t build e.g. 2 or 3 of them in tandem since it’d likely be cheaper/easier to do up front vs after the fact if things went wrong. They would then have the additional telescopes if things went right, offering even greater access.

piquadrat• 5 years ago

Arianespace fat-fingering an Ariane 5 into the wrong orbit recently didn't exactly help with my anxiety...

https://spacenews.com/bad-coordinates-led-ariane-5-astray-la...

(OTOH, I'm positive that particular issue won't reoccur)

lisper2• 5 years ago

I used to work at JPL, and I was there when the sky-crane (the system currently used to land rovers on Mars) was first proposed back in the late 90s. I remember thinking to myself, "That is the craziest idea I have ever heard, there is no way that could possibly work." But it did.

Never bet against NASA engineers. Sure, they have the odd high-profile screwup, but on the whole they are shockingly competent.

jcims3• 5 years ago

Do you know if there is any test footage of that anywhere? That's, to me anyway, the second most amazing thing about the sky crane...that I can't find a single frame of it in operation on earth.

detritus2• 5 years ago

I don't know why, but I've had this gut-wrenching feeling for a couple of years now that Something Terrible is going to happen to this before it gets into position at L2.

I really hope not, obviously, but this seems like an All Your Eggs In One Basket lesson in the making.

We need to commodify this tech, make them somewhat disposable, and sent oodles of them up on Starships.

cnlevy2• 5 years ago

Using 3 COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) components with 90% reliability can ensure 99.9% redundancy instead of having a Unique very reliable and even costlier 99.9% custom component can really lower costs. But it can happen only if mass is not a constraint.

From Casey Handmer's blog: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/03/04/sls-what-now/

The Perseverance Mars rover cost $2.4 billion, which works out to a few thousand salaries for just under a decade. Thousands of people are needed to build this rover because landing stuff on Mars is so hard that subsystem masses must be tracked to a tenth of a gram, on a system that weighs a tonne. The whole thing is meticulously handcrafted from custom silicon, PCBs, titanium tubes, motors, cameras, and other awe-inspiring instruments. Starship will be able to land 100 of them per flight. Now what? How can NASA feed a team that makes one feather light rover per decade for a billion dollars if the demand just jumped by a factor of a thousand and the unit cost fell by the same amount? Set up a production line? Work out how to make them with a team of ten? Build one every two weeks?

pkaye2• 5 years ago

The material requirements are extreme to what we typically us on earth. Handling temperature extremes, radiation, low outgassing, low weight.

machinehermiter• 5 years ago

I think this part of the problem though. We don't believe we can really do anything at this point so we have turned everything into a stochastic process with multiple draws needed and it gives everyone an out when things don't work.

"Oops, JWST blew up, guess we just got unlucky with that single draw from the urn. Shouldn't have put all our eggs in one basket. "

Just do it. No more urn thinking. Just launch , get in orbit and blow our minds with the data that is sent back. I don't want to hear about anything less than that.

bpodgursky• 5 years ago

I almost want the unfurling to get stuck, just b/c SpaceX launching a manned Starship out to a LaGrange point to hotfix it would be super cool.

bronson2• 5 years ago

Fly out there, spacewalk over, give it a little jiggle, looks good, fly home.

It would be like driving six hours to push a power button, but epic.

dirtyid• 5 years ago

Just want launch to be over so I don't have to deal with JW news anxiety anymore.

tectonic• 5 years ago

Such an exciting, and high stakes, and dramatically late and over-budget mission.

Goety2• 5 years ago

I am so amped for this telescope. I hope it exceeds my expectations.

It also looks like this location will be quite crowded in the future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_po...

sitkack• 5 years ago

We really should have a big science lab up at L2

tomschlick2• 5 years ago

Government red tape and contracting at its finest

Edit: Downvotes with no comments as to why... This thing is 24 years in development and 20x over budget. If thats not a failure of government contracting, budgeting, etc then idk what is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cos... - Obviously the platform will be cool once they get it launched, but until then its just a money pit.

systemvoltage4• 5 years ago

Another way to put it is that it’s a jobs program.

Edit: what’s with the downvotes? I would like to understand what the disagreement is here. Any gov program can be split up into two parts. One, the actual cost as dictated by the market economy, and second, the additional costs for delays, bureaucracy, etc which usually tends to be multiples of the actual costs. This money goes into paying salaries without actually making any progress. Hence the jobs program. What’s there to disagree here? Is this argument somehow belonging to a particular political spectrum? Downvotes are fine but I’d like to gain some understanding of where my thoughts are not aligned with you. Please explain your position.

omgwtfbyobbq2• 5 years ago

I think you're getting downvoted because what you're saying doesn't match up with the wiki article you linked.

The original estimate was for $1.6 billion, in I'm guessing the 90s, and the estimate had been updated to $5 billion by the time it was formally confirmed for construction.

The telescope was originally estimated to cost US$1.6 billion,[102] but the cost estimate grew throughout the early development and had reached about US$5 billion by the time the mission was formally confirmed for construction start in 2008.

So yes, it has been over budget, but by 2x-3x, not 20x, and that isn't adjusted for inflation.

Also, everything is just a money pit until it's launched/finished/etc.

gamblor956• 5 years ago

The original budget was a guess. They didn't know how much the telescope would cost because the required technology didn't actually exist at the start of the budgeting process 24 years ago.

Now that technology does exist, and it turns out it's quite expensive, which drove most of the cost increases. However, since then the budget increases have generally paced with inflation.

Source: your citation.

DubiousPusher5• 5 years ago

It's because this is a flippant, unhelpful attitude. If we were talking about building a mile of blacktop highway then such a casual observation about the overrun might be warranted.

But we're not talking about that. We're talking about building the first non-orbital space telescope in human history. To a certain extent, no one could know the actual cost ahead of time. It's one of those things you kind of have to do and it will cost what it will cost.

Was there waste I this project? Probably. But there's a good chance the overruns are dominated by true "found work" rather than waste.

In fact, this is exactly the kind of project you want handled by the government because the cost of failure is so high. In a project where you need to push the risk out as many decimal places as possible it is good to have an agency which can afford the overruns to do it.

minikites2• 5 years ago

Where are all of the privately funded space telescopes?

wolverine87612• 5 years ago

What basis do you have for blaming government contracting? Lots of projects built by lots of organizations are very late and over-budget. One difference between government and private industry is that the government has the resources and motivation to persist - they aren't in it for profit. If this was a private company, it may have been canceled long ago as unprofitable. Is that a preferable outcome?

In fact, wasn't the JWST built by Northrop Grumman to a great extent? Why not blame them?

EDIT: It's hard to criticize government contracting in the same context as NASA, which has taken more risks and achieved new things far beyond any private organization in history. NASA has operations throughout the Solar System, and in interstellar space. They are the only organization to put humans on the moon - 50 years ago! Can anyone else say anything that? SpaceX?

ufmace2• 5 years ago

The thing with this kind of project, we're not punching out the 10 millionth Honda Civic or something. There's a tremendous amount of stuff here that's never been done before. There's no good way to have an accurate estimate for how much it will cost. You pretty much have to just keep spending until you get it right. This works the same way whether it's Government or Private Industry. Just ask Intel how far over budget they've gone getting EUV working.

frakkingcylons• 5 years ago

Your comment doesn't add anything to the conversation. But for anyone else that is actually interested: the cost of JWST is really not that extravagant considering how much more capability it provides compared to HST.

Not even including its four space-shuttle servicing missions, Hubble cost $4 billion or $5 billion in today's dollars just to build and launch," Dressler notes. "Here we are, building a telescope that is almost seven times bigger, it is cryogenic, it is operating 1.5 million kilometres away, and it is costing the same amount as Hubble did, if not less. That is remarkable, and this is probably the biggest scale on which we will consider building such things in this country."

From this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/4671028a

systemvoltage4• 5 years ago

It blows my mind that humans can get together and build something like this.

I was just watching YT channel “Primitive Technology” and it really puts things into perspective. From sticks and stones to bootstrapping a James Webb Telescope that’s gonna sit at a langrange point between the Earth and the Sun. Woah.

swader999• 5 years ago

Interesting angle and this telescope really is a time machine.

me_me_me• 5 years ago

Still better than a failed jet fighter. At least we will have working telescope. Even if all we get out of it are some photos for a wallpaper for PC. Still better value as something is better then nothing in this case.

slownews454• 5 years ago

Does anyone remember the initial proposals for this. The cost was supposed to be $500M. At most something like $1B.

Given this is standard govt contracting - I'm sure it's come out much higher.

Jabbles• 5 years ago

Here is a nice table with the history of the budget:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cos...

slownews454• 5 years ago

Clicking through we get this

"JWST is now estimated to cost approximately $9.7 billion and launch in October 2021, which represents cost growth of 95 percent and 88 months of schedule delays since the project’s cost and schedule baselines were first established in 2009."

So around $10B. Amazing.

swarnie_2• 5 years ago

Fact boy covered it a few weeks ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CowU0QK0Pjs&ab_channel=Megap...

From what i remember this project has been running since around the time of Hubble

Still.... Can't wait for it to get up there, money and time well spent!

slownews454• 5 years ago

That's pretty amazing. A financial black hole.

A cool project, but if you think of the thousands of folks who didn't get funding so this thing could gobble everything up - these projects really become crazy budget wise (SLS did the same path).

I wish they would do pay for performance deals. We'll give you $4B if you put a telescope in space of X size that meets some basic specs.

If you look at commercial side, space imaging (earth facing) has just exploded and the cost side has gotten very very good. So it's clear you can get optics and sensing into space for a lot less.

nickik• 5 years ago

$1B? That gone last a year tops.

OrvalWintermute4• 5 years ago

Even 5B for a novel, and uniquely powerful observation platform would be a bargain!

When you are engineering a unit of 1 pushing the boundaries of science, with multiple conflicting constraints, funded by a variety of self-interested stakeholders, and are forced to do commercial production, rather than govt production, even when it is most cost effective, it isn't like you are heading towards lowest cost, technically acceptable.

slownews454• 5 years ago

You can get a pretty good idea of quality of project management based on how well or poorly they estimated project baseline costs at outset.

These are linked - incompetence in estimating costs / complexity = incompetence in execution = insane cost overruns.

And you would get far more science with 5 $2B projects then one project like this. And if this thing has a launch of deployment problem all eggs in one basket. If there are cost overruns and delays, also all eggs in a basket and no other options.

marcusverus• 5 years ago

It's easy to throw these big numbers around, but do you ever stop to consider the actual cost? Let's do some back-of-the envelope calculations to help us consider the human cost of a 5B telescope.

The Median US household income is ~68,000/year[0] The Average income tax paid by someone in the 50-75K income range is $4,600/year.[1] The average working career is probably around 40 years.

5,000,000,000 / 4,600 / 40 = 27,173

To fund a $5B project, 27,173 people (more, actually, since this is household data) could have worked for their entire working lives, with every dime of federal income tax being spent on that one project!

I agree that the JWST is a worthwhile project, but let's not pretend that it's a bargain.

[0]https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27... [1]https://www.fool.com/taxes/how-much-does-the-average-america...

ProAm• 5 years ago

Wait until you see what they claimed the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were supposed to cost....

redisman4• 5 years ago

And what the ROI is. Tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dead people and stalling the taliban for a little bit versus unlocking mysteries into the origins of the universe

hypertele-Xii2• 5 years ago

If you thought estimating software projects was hard, try estimating a friggin space launch.

908B64B197• 5 years ago

Here's the official release from the launch partner [0](Arianeespace and the Eeuropean Space Agency are providing the launch on an Ariane V rocket).

They are the ones responsible for that milestone of the project (NASA and JPL already completed manufacturing of the spacecraft).

Exciting news!

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/W...

0xF57A• 5 years ago

I was watching a presentation given by the MGT project manager at cal tech and he mentioned that the MGT has a lower diffraction limit than the JWST. I think “diffraction limit” was the term he used, I don’t remember. The idea was that the images are supposed to be sharper. I was very confused about that. Why build JWST if MGT is going to maker cleaner images?

foota• 5 years ago

I believe there are some kinds of photography that can only be done outside the atmosphere.

Edit: see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope, particularly comparison with other telescopes. Seems the primary reason is for infrared photography.

jjoonathan• 5 years ago

Maybe MGT isn't limited by diffraction but rather by atmospheric distortion (or residual distortion, because presumably they do what they can to correct it)? Just a guess, I'm not an astronomer.

bronson2• 5 years ago

MGT is limited to the light that filters through the atmosphere. JWST will be tuned to longer wavelengths (redshifted older objects) that can only be seen in cold space.

wolverine87612• 5 years ago

JWST will be tuned to longer wavelengths (redshifted older objects) that can only be seen in cold space.

As I understand it: We're placing it at L2 specifically for that reason, to isolate it from other radiation.

jcims3• 5 years ago

I'm just a rube but in general there are two issues:

1 - the atmosphere distorts and filters out a lot of light in various wavelengths. MGT likely has better resolution, but only for light that reaches it.

2 - JWST is primarily for infrared. Given blackbody radiation of the equipment itself can create a bunch of noise there, it's important to keep the equipment as cool as possible.

bongoman37• 5 years ago

Many wavelengths of light are simply blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. If you want to see them you have to go above the atmosphere.

wthomp• 5 years ago

The diffraction limit is the fundamental resolution limit of a telescope. This is the size of "spot" that will be created on the camera sensor for a single point of light like a star [1].

Its easy to calculate, just take the wavelength of the of light you want to observe and divide it by the diameter of the primary mirror (and multiply by ~1.2).

For example, for JWST observing in the mid-infrared, say 4micron, with a 6.5 meter diameter mirror, has a resolution limit of: 4e-6 / 6.5 = 6.15e-7 Or about 0.6 micro-radians (astronomers would normally use arcseconds but leaving in radians for clarity).

This is just the theoretical limit though, it's reduced by any imperfections in the optics, and for telescopes on the ground, it's limited by the blurring of the Earth's atmosphere to about 4 micro-radians.

For narrow fields of view, however, ground-based telescopes can use adaptive optics to compensate for this shimmering/blurring in real time and reach close to their theoretical diffraction limit. Plus, they can be much bigger since we don't have to launch them into space. I'm not familiar with the MGT but this might be how it will surpass JWST in terms of resolution (which again also depends on the wavelength).

For infrared observations though, a huge effect that can't be compensated for is sensitivity. At mid-infrared wavelengths, the Earth's atmosphere actually glows and makes it much harder to see faint sources. This is one of the ways JWST will really shine.

[1] Note however that you can still do things like measure the position of an object to less than the diffraction limit using e.g. centroiding. But you can't tell if there are two objects or one below this limit.

DiogenesKynikos• 5 years ago

I'll add to this that resolution is not the only metric by which you can judge a telescope. One major advantage that space telescopes have is that their environment is much more stable, making calibration (for example, of the flux of a source) easier. On Earth, the weather changes from night to night, or even from minute to minute. You're effectively looking through a constantly changing, semi-opaque filter - the atmosphere.

Ground-based telescopes have their own advantages, like the fact that they can be much larger and therefore can collect much more light.

This is just to say that both space- and ground-based telescopes are useful, and have their own strengths.

fnord77• 5 years ago

what's the biggest risk? rocket failure during takeoff or telescope malfunction?

xeromal• 5 years ago

I believe the unfurling of the solar panels is one of the tricky parts.

FranOntanaya• 5 years ago

Most rockets these days are pretty reliable. Ariane 5 only had one partial failure in 20 years I believe.

RaiausderDose2• 5 years ago

Ariane 5 rockets have accumulated 109 launches since 1996, 104 of which were successful, yielding a 95.4% success rate. Between April 2003 and December 2017, Ariane 5 flew 82 consecutive missions without failure, but the rocket suffered a partial failure in January 2018

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5

topspin• 5 years ago

There are several big risks. It's impossible to rank them in a credible way.

Obviously there are all the usual launch risks. The cryogenics system has had a lot of development problems. The deployment is staggeringly complex and involves components that are not known for their robustness. Finally there is no repair option; one critical things goes wrong or is found to be misdesigned and that's it.

sonograph• 5 years ago

I remember getting excited about this telescope a decade ago. I haven't heard of it since; but I thought it's budget was cut and it was over.

I'm excited NASA is finally going to get it up in space!

callesgg• 5 years ago

I bet it will fail to deploy properly. But I hope not.

pkaye2• 5 years ago

Actually the budget was overrun quite a bit. I think it will cost $10B at this point.

keanebean86• 5 years ago

$9.5 billion over is pocket change! If you adjust for inflation $10 billion is only $7.7 billion in 2007 dollars. Assuming the telescope works I can live with it being expensive.

darkwater• 5 years ago

It's ESA that's getting it up into space, NASA is "just" collaborating.

RaiausderDose2• 5 years ago

please don't blow up and deploy successful in space

abhiminator• 5 years ago

On a related note, I highly, highly recommend watching this well-made documentary on JWST, released around 3 and a half years ago -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLD9LKq0u9E

This documentary was produced by Northrop Grumman Corporation -- the builders of JWST under a NASA contract.

wolverine87612• 5 years ago

This documentary was produced by Northrop Grumman Corporation -- the builders of JWST under a NASA contract.

Is it promotional material?

gccs• 5 years ago

Propaganda

mongol• 5 years ago

What is it hoped this can see? Is there some specific hypothesis this telescope was built to confirm?

redisman4• 5 years ago

The oldest galaxies that have red shifted off the spectrum and are only visible with this. You can’t do IR telescoping except at L2 because earth is giving off its own IR reflection or radiation or something like that

SiempreViernes• 5 years ago

Hopefully it'll tell us about the period of reionisation, when the light of the first galaxies made the universe transparent again.

doctoboggan• 5 years ago

It should be able to detect the atmospheric makeup of expo planets (via spectroscopy during a transition). This will let scientists search for signs of life on other planets.

jl6• 5 years ago

If the JWST survives launch but has a subsequent mechanical problem that prevents it deploying properly (and it’s the kind of problem that would have been fixable on Hubble, using a shuttle mission) would it be feasible to mount a robotic rescue mission to chase it down and remote-hands it back to life? For less than the cost of just launching another JWST?

nabla92• 5 years ago

The JWST will not orbit Earth. It will be located near the second Lagrange point (L2) over 1,500,000 km away (The Moon is just 405,000 km from the Earth).

Space Shuttle could not have reached it.

wyldfire2• 5 years ago

How long can it stay stable at that point? Does it have thrusters to keep a station there? If so, how long is the fuel for them provisioned for?

Does use of the thrusters impact the sensors that the telescope uses?

pklausler2• 5 years ago

It's not an orbit, per se, but... it will go around the Earth once per year.

geenew• 5 years ago

It has a docking clamp, though that's for future-proofing. Apparently the initial type of mission envisioned was a crewed Orion vehicle, though I'm sure a wide variety of missions could attach.

My guess was that the clamp was mainly for possible future replenishment of consumables, though presumably some sort of robotic-arm-equipped repair mission could attach as well. A crewed mission seems possible, too, assuming one of the planned Lunar craft could be modified to go to the Lagrange point.

https://www.space.com/3833-nasa-adds-docking-capability-spac...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_Bus_(JWST)#Docking_...

imglorp2• 5 years ago

Nothing in the current fleet of new capsules have arms or airlocks.

There is hope for the robotic refueling type mission though, or at least the kind where a new utility bot attaches to an old satellite and takes over propulsion to extend its life.

https://nexis.gsfc.nasa.gov/rrm_refueling_task.html

BitwiseFool2• 5 years ago

The JWST orbits out beyond the Moon, so I don't know if the Orion capsule and European Service Module even has the Delta-V to make it to that Lagrange point and back. Plus, I'm also unsure about the life support and duration requirements for such a mission.

I imagine the only realistic repair mission would be with a Starship crew, seeing as Orion and all the other Commercial Crew vehicles would probably require some additional components to make it out that far and to sustain their crews. Starship seems big enough and far enough along in development to be viable.

Edit: The JWST has a docking ring to let Orion service it. But I don't know if the SLS in it's available configurations can get it up there. It seems like a contingency but I don't see any solid information about an Orion service mission.

wolverine87612• 5 years ago

The GP asked about robotic, not human missions.

ultramegachurch2• 5 years ago

Highly unlikely. That would require designing a new spacecraft from the ground up while also developing new robotics and operations technologies. I'd peg that mission at $300 - $500 million. NASA would almost certainty be better off documenting lessons learned and pursuing a new observatory.

nrdgrrrl• 5 years ago

They've spent almost 10 billion dollars on this telescope so far. What's another 0.5 billion for a repair mission?

mcbutterbunz• 5 years ago

I'd peg that mission at $300 - $500 million.

If that was the cost for that mission, it would be worth it considering JWST cost about 20x that amount.

derekp7• 5 years ago

I would think that a cheaper (or multiple cheaper) versions could be made if they don't require the long lifespan and reliability that previous launch costs inflicted. Once Starship is going, and if it proves to be as low cost as the current projections, I could see multiple space telescopes being designed cheaply for a launch every year, each one designed in a narrow configuration that serves a specific purpose. But I really don't know what all goes into making a space telescope so expensive currently.

phkahler3• 5 years ago

> But I really don't know what all goes into making a space telescope so expensive currently.

I think you already said it. The long life (high reliability) requirement, and I'll add the complexity of having it unfold. Both of those become non-issues if you build the telescope right into a space-X starship. There may be other issues with that, but the mirror wouldn't need to fold ;-)

ufmace2• 5 years ago

The trouble with robotic repair missions is that it could work pretty well if you knew 100% exactly what was wrong, and exactly what else might go wrong while applying the fix for whatever went wrong. The more potential unknowns, the harder it is. It's much harder to make a robot with enough general flexibility that it could probably handle diagnosing and repairing an unknown issue, or handle something going wrong while trying to carry out a planned repair sequence. Bolts jammed, too loose, too tight, tanks of stuff springing leaks, electrical short in some unknown place, component overheating for unknown reason, all sorts of things can go wrong that are tough to diagnose remotely or with a special-purpose robot.

nhoughto• 5 years ago

And you’d need to have it designed to be serviceable once deployed. I’d imagine there would be a few assumptions going into the design process, “once deployed humans won’t ever need to get to that..”

MayeulC• 5 years ago

How about deploying it near the ISS?

Torkel• 5 years ago

Latency is a bitch. So remote hands from earth is most likely a no-go, for this reason alone.

And if you bring astronauts close, then I guess that some EVAs in existing suits starts looking appealing vs developing those remote hands.

system2• 5 years ago

They wouldn't operating it like they play computer games. Mars rover has a major latency too, they can simply instruct it with limits and work slightly slower.

deepsun2• 5 years ago

Also, all robotic space repair satellites are very into military tech (even taking pictures of open space is very strictly controlled, because you may inadvertently take a picture of a military satellite). Not event talking about disabling err.. repairing, de-orbiting, spinning etc other satellites. That types of tech is opposed by military, that's actually one of the reason we don't clear dangerous space garbage (especially considering some of that garbage is actually working military satellites).

NavinF• 5 years ago

taking pictures of open space is very strictly controlled, because you may inadvertently take a picture of a military satellite

Citation needed

OrvalWintermute4• 5 years ago

It is conceivable that on-orbit repair missions like OSAM-1 could fix a mission with a mechanical failure, depending on the orbit that it reaches.

https://nexis.gsfc.nasa.gov/osam-1.html

dylan6042• 5 years ago

Seems to me it would be easier to design a craft to dock with it and bring back to an easier for humans to reach location. Then push it back out to where it needs to go. I'm sure there's some delta-v math to determine the fuel requirements, and I'm guessing it would also make a huge difference on how fast you wanted it back.

thangalin• 5 years ago

Time-lapse video of it opening (~1:20):

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57078657

endymi0n• 5 years ago

While it‘s awesome to finally see the JWST finally come to close to launch after all those years, now it‘s a close race between it and SpaceX Starship that could have taken the 6.5 meter mirror up to space in one whole piece in its 9m diameter belly rather than having to do all the miraculous origami that took two decades to develop in the first place…

minikites2• 5 years ago

I wouldn't trust any payload on a SpaceX ship given their track record.

JoeAltmaier• 5 years ago

That's how space travel development works. It doesn't take off; it crashes; it explodes; it fails to land; it works. From then on pretty much, it works.

Me1000• 5 years ago

The Falcon 9 has had 126 missions so far and only 2 of those were failures. It's not a perfect record, but it's pretty decent. And presumably SpaceX has learned from those failures. Compare that to the Ariane 5 rockets (which will actually be launching the James Web Space Telescope) which has had 109 launches, and 5 of them ended in failure.

I'm just going to assume you're referring to Starship's various explosions. It's far too early in the Starship development cycle to draw any kind of conclusions about it's reliability.

Starship is a prototype. It's a completely new vehicle with completely new engines, and they're building it with the expectation that the early versions are going to blow up. It's like saying Falcon 9 is unreliable because their early "grasshopper" prototype (for testing landing) exploded and at times. Also probably a good idea to note that these explosions all happened during their landing attempt, so in theory any payload onboard would have already been deployed. It's just the vehicle that would be lost. Of course they're still so early in the development cycle that Starship hasn't even attempted an orbital flight yet.

I get that it's weird watching these very early prototypes blow up so spectacularly and publicly, but that's the development model SpaceX has chosen. And we're not used to watching rockets being built and tested so out in the open. Personally I think it's exciting watching the progress they're making.

caconym_4• 5 years ago

Falcon 9 (and Heavy) has not experienced any kind of mission failure since 2016, the latter period accounting for (if I'm counting right) 69% of its total launches including the Amos-6 pad failure (which did not actually launch). Its actual failure rate is 1.5%.

It's not a track record that deserves any more derision than its contemporaries. Doing so in such vague terms just makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about, which goes double if you're thinking not of F9, but rather of those big shiny rockets they've been blowing up in Boca Chica recently. That (Starship) is a development program.

relativ575• 5 years ago

SpaceX launched three crews to the ISS within the last 12 months. In other words, they are trusted with payload with the highest caliber.

How can a comment be that ignorant yet presented in such a confident tone?

wolverine87612• 5 years ago

SpaceX has nothing to do with this. Their rocket has zero demonstrated capability for this mission.

jasonwatkinspdx9• 5 years ago

While I'm rooting for SpaceX with Starship, lets be clear: they're still trying to get hovering grain silo versions working. Meanwhile JWT is ready to go. If it's a race one side has already won rather emphatically.

caconym_4• 5 years ago

Actually, they're well beyond the "grain silos" by now. They've successfully demonstrated the "bellyflop" landing maneuver from a terminal velocity fall, and now they're (credibly) trying to launch a full prototype Starship stack to orbit within the next few months.

Wiki says JWST is planned to launch by this November, so I think there is a decent chance Starship beats it into space. That won't be a production-ready vehicle, and launching anything valuable on it (let alone something like the JWST) would be certifiable, but let's give credit where it's due.

1970-01-01• 5 years ago

It's pretty close to launch, but it still feels like it's not going to be ready for a few more years!

cromwellian2• 5 years ago

I feel like this is an all-eggs-in-one-basket mission. If it fails to launch, we have nothing.

Why not build many JWSTs, surely the cost per unit would go down, and launch more than one?

wolverine87612• 5 years ago

surely the cost per unit would go down, and launch more than one?

Surely? They didn't build a JWST factory. It might go up, as people with specialized skills or knowledge have moved on.

cromwellian2• 5 years ago

Yes, surely. Most of the cost was in R&D and in the mirror manufacturing. They've been designing and manufacturing it for 20 years. Per-unit costs would go down. Take the mirror, it's made of segments, the facility used to produce those segments certainly would benefit from scaling up production. They'd get better at fabbing them over time, increasing yields, reducing costs.

What NASA is doing is building the equivalent of a $10 billion fab to produce one chip. Space telescopes could be continually produced on a schedule, and retired on a schedule, with constant improvement.

Look at RS-25 engines vs Raptor engines in terms of costs to produce one.

dgrant• 5 years ago

I think the verb tenses were not perfect... I think he just meant: why did they build only 1 in the first place? They could have built N instead, at a lower cost per unit.

chorsestudios• 5 years ago

The cost per unit would probably remain around the same. You don’t really get price cuts for ordering 2 of a custom component instead of 1

cnlevy2• 5 years ago

Looks like it just gave Elon Musk some ideas

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/ofqm8o/elon_musk_us...

abacadaba• 5 years ago

godspeed jwst team! find me an alienz!

sghiassy• 5 years ago

OMFG!!!! I’m so excited… let’s go!!!!!!!

spaetzleesser4• 5 years ago

When I look at project management for the small projects (1-20 people) I am working on I always wonder how projects of such a complexity are managed. It must be freakishly difficult to coordinate all the pieces.

The people working on this will also have several stressful months ahead of them. From launch to full deployment so many things can go wrong and there is nothing that can be done when something fails.

7373737373• 5 years ago

I wonder the same for large (especially international) companies, government bureaucracies or other organizations. With thousands of employees and branches in different locations, it must be impossible to get a full understanding of the state of the system.

auto• 5 years ago

Same, makes you wonder how much slack/tolerance is built into these systems and organizations, and whether that comes in the form of manpower, process, etc. and whether or not it’s planned for, or just naturally evolves in large enough instances.

jasonwatkinspdx9• 5 years ago

This is what Systems Engineers do. There's no magic bullet, but the basic process is lots and lots of documents. Much of what NASA does is published openly so you can get a feel for what some of these document types are like. The wiki page gives a decent summary.

Building a model for the system is indeed a big part of the challenge. These days it's increasingly done as a fully detailed software simulation. The big CAD packages have specific functionality for this now. For example SpaceX runs on Siemens NX, and you can wade through their marketing speak to get some idea of how it works. CATIA is also popular with aerospace companies, and Autocad's products with architecture.

prpl• 5 years ago

Systems Engineering

prox3• 5 years ago

I followed their account, the last few years have been test after test after test.

naikrovek• 5 years ago

I really hope this isn't a "MAKE IT PASS, OR ELSE" situation.

this telescope doesn't deserve any functionality setbacks in exchange for more schedule setbacks.

a telescope made late because of fixes is a fully working telescope. a prematurely launched telescope is broken for its entire service life.

irjustin• 5 years ago

No, they know what's at stake. That's why it's been delayed... and delayed... and delayed...

The question we're all biting our nails for is - Will it work?

austincheney• 5 years ago

The Hubble was launched broken. The mirror had a precision defect and produced blurry photos. A team had to go up and manually correct the focus.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-mirror-flaw

julienchastang• 5 years ago

A post launch fix of this type will not be possible for JWST due to the solar (not Earth) orbit of the instrument.

redisman4• 5 years ago

Can’t do that with this orbit

parksy• 5 years ago

I fully agree, my first gut reaction every time I read an update about the JWST is fear that something will go wrong. I hope they take all the time needed to get it right.

I do also wonder if interactions with air / moisture / dust will degrade the components faster than they would wear out in space, the longer it's here on Earth? I'm guessing this is all accounted for too, just crazy to think of all the variables at play in the success of a project like this.

bane4• 5 years ago

It's my personal belief that these massive R&D space telescope programs are nearing their end. Computational approaches among multiple sensors, combined with good 'ol factory mass manufacturing powered by low-cost reusable launch technology allows for the money spent on one-shot programs like this to be spent and allocated in radical different ways.

Instead of building one huge short life-span spacecraft, why not launch hundreds or thousands of lower cost, less capable birds incrementally? You can start with a small "first light" capable instrument with a dozen or so spacecraft, then over time and more launches put up more and more capability and decommission failed or low capability pieces.

Use some computational methods to combine the sensor collection from dozens, hundreds, or thousands of these kinds of spacecraft and you could end up with planet sized instruments pretty efficiently.

By eliminating lots of the hard engineering for the massive instruments (like serviceability, difficult to make massive mirrors, etc) you can build even better instruments that are generational and relatively inexpensive.

You get a more flexible funding story as well, e.g. fund at maintenance levels during difficult economic times and fund at larger amounts during boom times with matching launch schedules.

Tasking the fleet could be more dynamic as well, with different researchers able to reserve different percentages of a huge fleet for their specific experiments and needs -- e.g. reserve a hundred spacecraft for a long dwell "deep field" type observation, or reserve thousands for planetary imaging in a nearby solar system.

I know there are naysayers about this who think it's improbable. I urge those to think about the Starlink fleet, which went from zero birds in the air in 2015 to over 1500 spacecraft today. Now instead of radio antenna, what if they had imaging sensors and were turned to face out? SpaceX certainly didn't spend anywhere near what JWST ran as a program to reach this point and the development time has been a fraction so far.

Cacti• 5 years ago

You need exceedingly accurate timing and transmission to do computational inference with multiple telescopes. Even minuscule errors will wreck the entire effort. It is very, very hard even with only three telescopes on earth, nevermind a hundred hurtling around in orbit communicating with lasers.

The people who work on these things aren’t morons, and everyone knows the scaling factor of multiple receivers. It’s just very, very hard.

bane4• 5 years ago

Sure it's hard, bit I'm not really even proposing anything new. Labeyrie has proposed such a fleet, but raw economics have put it off, not technology -- I'd hardly call him a slouch in astronomical interferometry.

nine_k2• 5 years ago

As already said, the problem is in coordination of multiple telescopes in spacetime.

It might be better to build one giant telescope piecemeal, by adding more and more small mirrors. A similar approach is taken by several terrestrial telescopes.

It would still be very interesting to have a few space telescopes distributed across the Solar system, much wider than the Earth orbit. It could give a sort of stereoscopic picture of closest star systems, even though "simultaneous" observation would be ill-defined for them.

imglorp2• 5 years ago

Actually, pulsars can be used for timing and position, and all telescopes in your fleet could have sight of the same ones. It's probably far easier to do interferometry if you don't have atmospheric distortion to deal with.

skhr0680• 5 years ago

Phone cameras show both the power and limits of computational photography. You can’t run away from physics forever.

whoisburbansky2• 5 years ago

Phone cameras don’t have multiple lenses working together that you can interpolate between to create a single giant virtual lens. The technique OP is referring to is already used for the largest ground based radio telescopes.

gpt5• 5 years ago

Even if this computational photography vision is years away, JWST might still become obsolete quickly.

SpaceX's Starship would be able carry telescopes than JWST as a single piece. This would dramatically simplify development and increase optical quality.

manquer2• 5 years ago

The challenges in building a mirror that size is enormous and take years.

It is not only fairing size that is limiting

wolverine87612• 5 years ago

Could you back that up with anything? There is so much excitement about SpaceX, it seems like all I read about on HN.

nullifidian• 5 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEECPKLHwl8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_strategic_science_missio...

They are already planning telescopes using Starship's capabilities, and one of these telescopes has a mirror that consists of several segments, albeit not hexagonal and is pre-assembled. The telescope is being touted as an overall cheaper solution due to the diameter that Starship could carry. But there is also a telescope that is an enlarged version of JSWT.

JWST is probably a required stepping stone for these future telescopes.

techdragon• 5 years ago

I'm building this! Minus the "computational methods" magic... Because as someone has already commented, there are significant issues with just merging the telescope data together with computational magic.

With the advent of SpaceX's Starship providing a 100% (and the 100% is crucial to the economics of this project) reusability there is significant potential to reduce many of the costs that normally increase the price of a satellite. From not throwing away a $10,000 PPOD (cubesat deployer) to the myriad cost savings available when you know the next flight is cheap and you don't need to buy a $500 part, where a $50 or even $5 part would do the job, due to the different risk profile in many smaller satellites, compared to a few larger ones.

Instead of building one huge short life-span spacecraft, why not launch hundreds or thousands of lower cost, less capable birds incrementally? You can start with a small "first light" capable instrument with a dozen or so spacecraft, then over time and more launches put up more and more capability and decommission failed or low capability pieces.

Thats the basic plan in a nutshell. Start small, build up, from the ~10cm primary mirror "phase one" prototypes, to eventually using ~50cm primary mirrors. Steady progress using a standardised telescope "chassis" for each generation, with each having a specific camera/instrument rather than the common (for space telescopes) practice of having complicated multi-instrument optical pathways.

Think Planet Labs, but facing out at the universe, not down towards the ground, and a non-profit/charity not a commercial company.

I'll spare the whole spiel that I've regurgitated into grant proposals (space costs money and it would be nice if I didn't have to pay the entire $250,000 or more out of my own pay-check over the course of a decade) if you want to know more (or just talk about it, or offer to help, or whatever else at all) you can contact me directly (email in my HN profile) or wait till I publish the eventual website later this year, I'll be sure to post a Show HN once I have pretty pictures of hardware.

zabzonk3• 5 years ago

Instead of building one huge short life-span spacecraft

Short life-span? How long has the Hubble been up there?

minitoar4• 5 years ago

It’s the telescope of Theseus, though.

foolfoolz• 5 years ago

webb needs to use thrusters to stay in position. there’s 5 years worth of fuel onboard

they did design the fuel in a way that potentially could be refilled… but the refilling craft doesn’t exist. and webb timescales make that sound impossible

mustardgreen• 5 years ago

The Starlink fleet has been a huge problem for the field of astronomy entirely do to this "move fast and break things" ethos.

mhio5• 5 years ago

I doubt the large space telescope programs will end, there will just be other options to how they're done. Scientists will still push the state of the art (if they get the funding) which will still be expensive and might still involve big mirrors here and there for optical imaging. Building a large fleet radio telescope in space actually sounds like a good proposal for massive R&D space telescope program.

Unfortunately optical interferometry as suggested isn't a thing yet. Even the physical optical interferometry we do on the ground has only become possible relatively recently. I'm not in the field so I'm not sure what's around the corner but seems to rule out Hubble/JWST/WFIRST/LUVOIRE replacements any time soon. Maybe TESS like scanning imaging would be a good fit for a fleet?

The big change I hope will be easier, cheaper, regular access to space which hopefully means there won't be such unicorn projects that spend 4 years in systems testing because they _can't_ fail.

Tasking the fleet could be more dynamic as well, with different researchers able to reserve different percentages of a huge fleet for their specific experiments and needs

Specific observations require specific instruments though, there's no one size fits all fit out for a fleet satellite. JWST has a very large mirror looking a near and mid infra red a long way from earth with large IR shielding. You can't do this and Kepler/Tess type imagery in a single fleet unless the sats are specifically equipped for it on the ground before launch and sent to vastly different places which kind of nullifies a really dynamic fleet.

Not saying that having a standardised, cheap satellite bus that can be quickly thrown up in space won't change things, it's just not the answer to everything.

arp2424• 5 years ago

Deploying multiple smaller telescopes was one of the designs that was considered in the 90s for what eventually became the JWT.

I'm not an expert on any of this, and I don't know specifically why it was rejected, but it's not like people aren't thinking about all sorts of possibilities. Usually there's a reason they're not being done though.

dreamcompiler2• 5 years ago

Use some computational methods to combine the sensor collection from dozens, hundreds, or thousands of these kinds of spacecraft and you could end up with planet sized instruments pretty efficiently.

This kind of thing cannot currently be done at optical wavelengths no matter how much computational power you throw at it; the frequencies are simply too high to do phase capture and syncing digitally.

It's done on a limited basis at the very large telescope (VLT) in Chile but the phase combiners there are optical and analog.

shawkinaw• 5 years ago

From watching the documentary linked in another comment, a big part of the JWST’s potential is its deep-infrared sensitivity, which in turn requires very cold temperatures and exquisite shielding, and why it will be literally 1 million miles from Earth. I don’t think you can fake that with computation.

jamesmontalvo3• 5 years ago

Nice. On track to beat https://xkcd.com/2014/

sidcool• 5 years ago

This is one of the most daring missions. In case of any malfunction there will be no chance of reparing. Everything has to go right

The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review

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