JAMES WEBB!—the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope has finally launched—100x more powerful than Hubble—is finally enroute to Lagrange Pointe 2 at ~1.5 million km from 🌍 & operate at -230 C. The #JamesWebb will change our understanding of the universe!
2) the James Webb is honestly one of the greatest crowning achievements of humanity. Seriously. It’s heat shield 🛡 helps achieve some the lowest temperatures ever—cooling it to much colder than deep space itself! bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
3) the James Webb’s sun shield 🛡 is so badass that it can block all of the sun’s energy from reaching the telescope side except for 1 watt! You kid’s nightlight is 4 watts! And this sucker is in direct sunlight in LG2 of Earth!
4) However this is just the beginning— The James Webb is over >300 points of failure until it is fully ready to work. Not just the launch 🚀 but also the unfolding of its sun multilayered super thin shield. Any rip would be big trouble, because astronauts can’t go fix it at L2.
5) there is also the risk of contamination — even tiny water droplets / aerosols can be bad contaminants. Water absorbs light at 3.1 microns of wavelength - which would screw up the instruments (and require more exposure to correct). So it’s quite key to avoid—no second chances!
6) the James Webb is so sensitive it can detect a bee 🐝 ‘s heat from half a million km away!!!
7) The Lagrange Points are 5 orbital locations where an object can stay in relative to Earth - Sun orbit without consuming much fuel. Think of L1-L5 as “parking spots” in space because of the gravitational forces of Earth and Sun balance. Webb is going to park at L2!
8) here is the moment of separation of the telescope from its 3rd stage. It will only unfold later once approaching the L2 parking spot (about 3x the distance of the Earth-Moon). So we have about several months of nailbiting wait to go to make sure the unfolding is successful.
9) Webb is now safely* on its way! Safely… other than risk of micrometeorites in space that can damage the mirror and sun shield. And unfolding of the sunshield without a hitch. There is no astronauts who can come to the rescue of this.
10) The Webb’s solar array has deployed. Thank god. Also let this sink in — the @NASAWebb twitter account was created in early 2009! It’s been that long of a saga for its creation and launch!
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