** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **
- Thread starter Cosimo
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Thanks for that buddy! Fingers crossed
Which is why they spent years testings, then testing the tests, over and over again, with different teams. Distance means it cannot be repaired, if this goes wrong it'll be a disaster.
You bet the Russian's weren't going to have a chance for some junior worker to mess up, then crudely cover it up.
Yeah I didn't realise its. So sensitive it has to be that far out!
Unbelievable its replacing hubble. 31 years! What a wonder of the modern the modern age hubble is. Really hope James Webb is a success. Going to be fascinating what it uncovers!
It's not really replacing Hubble, it operates in an entirely different wavelength and has a specific mission. Will only last 5-10 years.
The replacement you are thinking of is the Nancy Grace telescope. Will also orbit L2, but should be easier to launch as it's much smaller, and will have the same imaging capability of Hubble but be capable of 100x the FoV Hubble currently has - means it is much faster to image.
Should launch 2027.
Soldato
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Missed the launch I was downstairs
I've read it can apparently look back about 13.7 billion years, is that right? May have been reading the infographic wrong.
It can look a couple of hundred million years earlier into the past compared to Hubble, IIRC.
Soldato
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Yeah, in theory it should be able to detect the IR from the very first stars in the universe.
This is the one I was looking at. https://jwst.nasa.gov/images2/cosmic_timeline.jpg
Not quite 13.7 billion, as that's when the big bang happened. Won't be able to ever see that far back, at least under current laws of physics.
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That was amazing and congratulations to all involved in the project.
Job still not completed and what comes next:
Oi, where the hell have you been
Merry Christmas dude, we missed you here
And now the long 6 months begins before we get the first real photo taken of a test object out there for focusing the lenses and mirror tiles calibration 
one of the NASA engineers was quoted as saying JWST is so sensitive that it could see a car numberplate on the surface of the moon from L2.
one of the NASA engineers was quoted as saying JWST is so sensitive that it could see a car numberplate on the surface of the moon from L2.
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This is just one of the reasons why it sits in L2, the other major reason is that the L2 point has an almost natural orbit so the telescope's onboard thrusters only need to do minimal work every so often to keep it in that orbit. It's all thanks to the gravitational pull from how the inner bodies in the solar system play on objects sitting in these L points. Essentially it's there because it conserves the most fuel and as such gives a 10 year service life.
Interesting, I hadn’t heard of that one. Should be amazing to have that alongside JWST.
Brilliant page, so excited to see what new things it finds etc.
Fingers crossed everything goes to plan now