posted 04-23-2015 04:25 PM               

This thread is intended for comments and questions about the James Webb Space Telescope and the updates published under this topic.

The JWST is NASA's next orbiting observatory and the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. A tennis court-sized telescope orbiting far beyond Earth's moon, Webb will detect infrared radiation and be capable of seeing in that wavelength as well as Hubble sees in visible light.

posted 01-14-2017 11:10 AM               

The revised rule makes several other minor changes to technologies included on export control lists. It also shifts NASA's James Webb Space Telescope from the USML to the Commerce Control List, after the State Department concluded that the space observatory "was within the scope of spacecraft and related items that did not warrant being subject to the ITAR." JWST will require an export license as it will be shipped to French Guiana in 2018 for launch on an Ariane 5.

posted 05-30-2017 07:09 PM               

NASA's "Webb-cam" Captures Engineers at Work on Webb at Johnson Space Center

NASA's special "Webb-cam" kept an eye on the development of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, since 2012. Now that Webb telescope has moved to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, a special Webb camera was installed there to continue providing daily video feeds on the telescope's progress.

Space enthusiasts, who are fascinated to see how this next generation space telescope has come together and how it is being tested, are able to see the telescope's progress as it happens by watching the Webb-cam feed online.

There were two Webb-cams at NASA Goddard. Those cameras, which were mounted inside the giant cleanroom, provided still photos (refreshed every minute) of the activity inside and gave a peek at what engineers and technicians were doing to the telescope as it came together. Over the last five years, Webb-cam viewers saw some amazing images of the Webb at Goddard, such as when all 18 gold-coated mirror segments of the Webb's primary mirror were mounted on the telescope.

"The two Webb-cams we installed in Goddard's giant cleanroom have developed a huge following over the last five years," said Maggie Masetti, social media manager and web developer on the Webb telescope mission at NASA Goddard. "With millions of views every month, you can bet that if there was a camera glitch, we heard about it right away."

The new "Webb-cam" is mounted where it has a view of the cleanroom at NASA Johnson Space Center. The camera fronts the chamber where the Webb telescope will be undergoing cryogenic testing in a massive chamber called "Chamber A." Although there is no view of Webb once it is inside the chamber during the actual cryo-optical testing, there will be much activity on Webb in the cleanroom itself for several weeks before and after.

The Web camera at NASA's Johnson Space Center can be seen online here, with larger views of the cams available here.

posted 07-12-2017 06:35 AM               

The vault-like, 40-foot diameter, 40-ton door of NASA's Johnson Space Center's historic Chamber A sealed shut on July 10, 2017, signaling the beginning of about 100 days of cryogenic testing for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope in Houston.

posted 07-12-2017 07:30 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Fra Mauro:
Any idea of the cost of this test?

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This test is common to all new spacecraft designs. The issue was finding one large enough to hold the telescope in the deployed configuration.

posted 08-01-2017 07:39 AM               

BepiColombo, unlike JWST, has a narrow launch window in order to reach Mercury. ESA officials said earlier in July that the mission's current launch window opens Oct. 5 and runs through Nov. 28. JWST does not have similar launch window restrictions...

"It's unclear if BepiColombo will be out of the way" before JWST arrives at Kourou for launch preparations, [Alan Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution and a member of the Astrophysics Advisory Committee] said. He believed JWST needed three to six months of "full access" to facilities at Kourou to prepare for launch. "You really want to have BepiColombo long gone before you move in and start taking over."

If BepiColombo sticks to its current schedule, that could mean delaying JWST by several months. "There's some concern that that October 2018 launch may actually slip into the spring of 2019," he said.

posted 09-28-2017 01:47 PM               

"The change in launch timing is not indicative of hardware or technical performance concerns," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington. "Rather, the integration of the various spacecraft elements is taking longer than expected."

As part of an international agreement with the ESA (European Space Agency) to provide a desired launch window one year prior to launch, NASA recently performed a routine schedule assessment to ensure launch preparedness and determined a launch schedule change was necessary. The careful analysis took into account the remaining tasks that needed to be completed, the lessons learned from unique environmental testing of the telescope and science instruments at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the current performance rates of integrating the spacecraft element.

posted 11-15-2017 01:43 PM               

So, it seems that its range in pointing will be somewhat limited. Also, any particular window of opportunity for an observation will only happen approximately once every 180 days if the object is on the orbital plane. Probably not a big deal but it does limit what can be observed at any given point.

posted 01-24-2018 10:14 PM               

The observatory's combined science instruments and optics will be loaded into the carrier and returned to Ellington to be flown to Northrop Grumman's facilities in Redondo Beach, California, where they will be integrated with Webb's sunshield and spacecraft bus.

posted 02-28-2018 03:24 PM               

In 2017, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project delayed its launch readiness date by at least 5 months, and further delays are likely.

The delay — from October 2018 to a launch window between March and June 2019 — was primarily caused by components of JWST's spacecraft taking longer to integrate than planned. JWST made considerable progress toward the completion of integration and test activities in the past year. However, the project used all remaining schedule reserve — or extra time set aside in the schedule in the event of delays or unforeseen risks — to address technical issues, including an anomaly on the telescope found during vibration testing.

Extending the launch window provided the project up to 4 months of schedule reserve. However, shortly after requesting the new launch window in September 2017, the project determined that several months of schedule reserve would be needed to address lessons learned from the initial folding and deployment of the observatory's sunshield (see image).

Given remaining integration and test work ahead — the phase in development where problems are most likely to be found and schedules tend to slip — coupled with only 1.5 months of schedule reserves remaining to the end of the launch window, additional launch delays are likely. The project's Standing Review Board will conduct an independent review of JWST's schedule status in early 2018 to determine if the June 2019 launch window can be met.

JWST will also have limited cost reserves to address future challenges, such as further launch delays, and is at risk of breaching its $8 billion cost cap for formulation and development set by Congress in 2011. For several years, the prime contractor has overestimated workforce reductions, and technical challenges have prevented these planned reductions, necessitating the use of cost reserves.

Program officials said that existing program resources will accommodate the new launch window — provided remaining integration and testing proceeds as planned without any long delays. However, JWST is still resolving technical challenges and work continues to take longer than planned to complete. As a result, the project is at risk of exceeding its $8 billion formulation and development cost cap.

posted 02-28-2018 05:35 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
If Webb were to be lost, it would be a significant setback for astronomy.

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posted 03-27-2018 10:26 AM               

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope currently is undergoing final integration and test phases that will require more time to ensure a successful mission. After an independent assessment of remaining tasks for the highly complex space observatory, Webb's previously revised 2019 launch window now is targeted for approximately May 2020.

...NASA is establishing an external Independent Review Board (IRB), chaired by Thomas Young, a highly respected NASA and industry veteran who is often called on to chair advisory committees and analyze organizational and technical issues. The IRB findings, which will complement the [project's Standing Review Board] SRB data, are expected to bolster confidence in NASA's approach to completing the final integration and test phase of the mission, the launch campaign, commissioning, as well as the entire deployment sequence.

posted 05-04-2018 08:10 AM               

In a presentation at a meeting of the National Academies' Space Studies Board here May 3, Greg Robinson, the JWST program director at NASA Headquarters, said some "screws and washers" appear to have come off the spacecraft during recent environmental testing at a Northrop Grumman facility in Southern California.

Technicians found the items after the spacecraft element of JWST, which includes the bus and sunshield but not its optics and instruments, was moved last weekend from one chamber for acoustics tests to another to prepare for vibration testing.

"Right now we believe that all of this hardware — we're talking screws and washers here — come from the sunshield cover," he said. "We're looking at what this really means and what is the recovery plan." The problem, he said, was only a couple of days old, and he had few additional details about the problem.

"It's not terrible news, but it's not good news, either," he said.

posted 06-27-2018 11:40 AM               

The James Webb Space Telescope will produce first of its kind, world-class science. Based on recommendations by an Independent Review Board, the new launch date for the James Webb Space Telescope is March 30, 2021. I'm looking forward to the launch of this historic mission.

posted 01-28-2020 02:24 PM               

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project has made significant progress since GAO's last report in March 2019, such as completing testing of the observatory's individual elements and integrating them together in August 2019. However, new technical challenges have required the project to use more schedule reserve — extra time set aside in the project's schedule to accommodate unforeseen risks or delays — than planned. As of October 2019, the project had used about 76 percent of its available schedule reserve and no longer plans to launch in November 2020.

The project is now managing to a March 2021 launch date but estimates only a 12 percent likelihood that this date will be achieved. NASA plans to reassess the launch date in the spring of 2020.