The first success of the largest space telescope yet: on its journey to its final location, it fully extended the sun’s protection—one of the mission’s most challenging operations.
The James Webb Space Telescope, which was launched on Christmas, has revealed the entire giant sun shield at an important and complex stage. Someone said, “All five layers of the sun shield are fully extended.” NASAA worker at the control center in Baltimore, USA, on Tuesday as her colleagues cheered. The shield’s deployment began on Monday.
A sun shield, shaped like a sail and the size of a tennis court, protects the telescope and its sensitive instruments from heat and light. Its thin film is made of Kapton, a material known for its resistance to heat and cold.
Sigh of relief from NASA engineers
Because the telescope was too large for an Ariane 5 rocket, it had to be folded up before launch. Detection in space was a complex and risky process that worried NASA officials a lot. “When he asked me what keeps me awake at night, it’s to spread the sunscreen,” project manager Bill Ochs said before the operation.
An Ariane 5 rocket, the successor to the legendary Hubble telescope, is carried into space from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana on Christmas Day. The James Webb Telescope is set to explore the early days of the universe 13 billion years ago, and thus a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Astronomers hope to draw conclusions about the formation of the first stars and galaxies.
The telescope, named after a former director of the US Space Agency, was jointly developed with the European Space Agency NASA who – which and CSA. This also Max Planck Institute In astronomy, the University of Cologne and several German companies were involved.
The project, which began in 1989, was originally supposed to start in the early 2000s. However, new problems delayed the project for years, and costs tripled to nearly ten billion dollars (8.8 billion euros). Also, the start had to be postponed several times.
