If the secondary mirror deploys ok, I will start to believe they have a chance.
Thrag
4875
344 potential single point failures?! Here I though IT was stressful.
It’s a big reason it ended up costing $10 billion and is more than a decade behind schedule. They had to figure out how to make something that complex work in the vacuum of space reliably with as much certainty as possible.
Hey guys, why is the USS Enterprise like a roll of toilet paper?
Djscman
4878
Good news!
To wipe up the Klingons hanging around Uranus?
Close enough. The canonical answer is “They’re both circling Uranus looking for Klingons!”
schurem
4880
Keepin’ it classy :)
So when’s the next step? That’s unfolding the main mirror, isn’t it?
Well, the main mirrors will unfold. But only till about the final centimeter. That last centimeter is going to take weeks as they make sure all the segments align properly. They do not have a lot of margin for error there.
2021 had the most (attempted) launches to orbit since 1967. That that record stood for over 50 years really speaks to how space exploration lost its way.
Now they have to spend the next five months aligning each mirror microscopically, calibrating the instruments, and waiting for the telescope to cool down to its coldest point.
dtolman
4887
I was super pessimistic about the telescope deploying, and I am super excited and happily surprised.
The size of this scope is just monstrous - at 6.5 meters (21 feet 4 inches) wide, it is the 14th largest scope in (or above) the world!
Houngan
4888
Aw come on, five months? We’re getting pictures from frickin’ robots on Mars an hour after they land. I know this thing is, like, 40 megapixel or something like that but let’s light this candle!
Even with the sunshield deployed and floating in the cold hard vacuum of deep space, it’s still too warm. The cooling system will take months for it to get to its operating temperature.
They also need time to align each mirror separately to within tolerances measured in nanometers after all the vibration it experienced on launch, and then they need to calibrate all the instruments.
And do it all in SPAAAAAACE!
This is just the team saying they need to goof off or have a vacation for a bit after many years of stressful work!
Here’s the analog:
Matt_W
4892
It’s an infrared telescope. So the whole scope needs to be cool enough that the light it emits won’t swamp the images it’s taking. That’s the reason it’s out at L2 as well. In that location, it can always turn the sunshield to shadow the mirror from infrared light coming from the sun, the earth, and the moon all at once.
I feel a slight urge to respond to this with a “this isn’t even my final form!” Dragonball meme.
