JWST unfurled

In my last newsletter I wrote about the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. Post launch there were many operations that it had to go through to be successfully deployed, the most major of which included its unfolding.

It's now reported that the telescope's unfolding has completed. There were a total of 344 potential points of failure - now all but 49 of these have been “retired”. It would seem that most of the potential and highest risk failure points have passed.

It's probably fair to say that the potential problems may have been exaggerated, at least in the media, so as to “keep us on the edge of our seats”. But, the fact that it's been successful is a tribute to the engineering talent and planning on the project.

Now we must await the telescope to cool down to its operational temperature of 40K or about -223C. Cooling down in the vacuum of space isn't something that happens quickly - we must wait for the heat to radiate away as a vacuum is a pretty good insulator!

The telescope is on its journey to the L2 Lagrange Point between the Sun and Earth, now being about three quarters of the way there. It will be late June before we see any images, but I'm sure it will be worth the wait.

NASA has put together a nice set of animations that show the unfolding that has now taken place.