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James Webb Space Telescope launch [video]

487 points| marcodiego | 4 years ago |youtube.com | reply

240 comments

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[+] mjsweet|4 years ago|reply
My wife is an astrophysicist here in Australia and had been looking forward to this launch for over a decade. She plans on using James Webb and gravitational lensing to observe galaxies at extremely high redshifts. Basically one looks behind single or clusters of closer galaxies for very young galaxies in the early stages of forming, not long after the Big Bang. The gravity well of the closer cluster acts as a giant lense, acting as an additional optical element to the telescope propelling us even further into the distant past.

As we watched the launch I asked her what James Web means to astronomy. Her answer? "It will fundamentally change what we know about the universe".

[+] savant_penguin|4 years ago|reply
This is amazingly exciting

Would she know about any list of projects that intend to use the new measurements?

[+] rnoorda|4 years ago|reply
It's always inspiring to see what can be accomplished by large groups of people working for years and years to create things that have never been made before. And then the elation of success, after years and years of work, delays, and more work.

Watching the launch made me feel the wonder of spaceflight I felt as a child- and the holiday timing felt even more perfect.

[+] melling|4 years ago|reply
Yes, it has been in the works for a long time.

“Development began in 1996 for a launch that was initially planned for 2007”

“Construction was completed in late 2016, after which an extensive testing phase began”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

While it’s great that it’s finally up, we should re-evaluate why it takes such a long time to develop these projects.

The pace of innovation appears to have slowed greatly in recent decades.

[+] cycomanic|4 years ago|reply
Congrats to launch team, Webb has just separated from Ariane 5. Perfect ride!
[+] miohtama|4 years ago|reply
How many single points of failure left after getting Webb on its way to L2? :)
[+] mabbo|4 years ago|reply
Hard part is done- now for the really scary part.

Hundreds of deployment steps will follow. Each one has to go perfectly. If it doesn't, the JWST fails and tens of billions of dollars and 30 years wasted (by some definition of 'waste').

But for every single one of those steps, an incredible amount of work has been done to ensure that it cannot fail.

But if any step fails, there's no repair mission possible for at least a decade or more.

[+] garaetjjte|4 years ago|reply
>there's no repair mission possible for at least a decade or more.

There's no repair mission possible, period. It only has enough fuel to keep orbiting L2 for around 10 years.

[+] tzfld|4 years ago|reply
Yes, somewhat stressful: "JWST has 344 single-point failures, 80% of which are in deployment systems"
[+] C19is20|4 years ago|reply
I said it on a different thread...why not build two (while they're at it)?
[+] aidos|4 years ago|reply
In our house it was like; they’re launching the Webb! Do you think they’re gutted about working Christmas? No, I think they’re enjoying the best Christmas present ever.

Congratulations to all involved.

[+] incompatible|4 years ago|reply
Also on NASA TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X5lGlDOfg
[+] cycomanic|4 years ago|reply
Watching the NASA stream I find it amazing that they as a science organisation are still using non scientific units. All this talk about miles, miles per hour etc.
[+] antod|4 years ago|reply
This one snuck up on me. After being long aware of this project and how massively ambitious/difficult/cool it was and how much trouble it was having due to that ambition, subconsciously I must've parked it away as "not going to happen for a while".

Time has passed while not paying attention, and it has actually launched. Well done to everyone involved!

[+] Bayart|4 years ago|reply
Tout est nominal ! See you at Lagrange point L2 !
[+] smarx007|4 years ago|reply
Thanks to this I realized Youtube website is purposefully breaking the picture-in-picture playback on a phone.
[+] jpindar|4 years ago|reply
Yeah, that's annoying. But there's another app, YouTube Vanced, that works.
[+] nabla9|4 years ago|reply
29 days until it reaches L2.

180 days (6 months) until it starts working

[+] m3kw9|4 years ago|reply
I’m confused as to how they are still able to see back 13 billion years. I thought all the light from the original Big Bang has already passed us.
[+] layer8|4 years ago|reply
The big bang didn’t happen at any particular location. It happened everywhere all at once. Thus light from the big bang (or rather, what’s currently the cosmic microwave background) will continue passing us for all eternity. (That is, until the EM waves become stretched too long due to cosmological redshift.)
[+] baq|4 years ago|reply
Space is expanding faster than the speed of light. This means we’ll be able to see the same time in the past, just from further and further away.
[+] sizzzzlerz|4 years ago|reply
Congratulations to STSI and all the dedicated men and women who've worked so hard and long to make this happen! Through all the setbacks and difficulties, they've overcome them all. Now, let's get some great science!
[+] curiousgal|4 years ago|reply
I have a question seeing how this project has been decades in the making. Wouldn't newer technologies have been discovered in the meantime? Do they still send whatever devices they built years ago? How exactly does it work?
[+] 1_player|4 years ago|reply
20 year old technology has had 20 years of testing and improvements, something that a piece of tech invented today doesn't have.

The cost of failure is so high you want to succeed at all costs rather than have the most advanced tech money can buy.

[+] YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo|4 years ago|reply
The technology standard is something in between the absolute high tech of the development start which is way ahead of the general consumer parts.