For nearly two decades, thousands of people, around the world, many spent
Their entire careers, built the James Webb Space Telescope.
And it all comes down
to this.
Once we launch the James Webb Space Telescope, there are
no second chances. We have 300 single-point
failure items and they all have to work right.
When you’re a million miles away from the Earth, you can’t send someone to fix it.
We’ve never put a telescope this large
in space. To unfold the history of
the Universe, we must first unfold this telescope.
This is the largest
primary mirror, the largest sunshield, and the most powerful space telescope
ever built. And yet, this large telescope
needs to fit inside a 5.4 meter diameter rocket fairing.
Think of what you are doing. You’re taking this
extraordinarily, delicate, precise, state-of-the-art scientific instrument
you’re slapping it on a rocket, for the next 8 minutes, the explosion
from that rocket is following you into outer space.
Two weeks. That’s how long it will take to fully deploy the Webb Telescope.
We can take longer if we need to, but those two weeks after launch are going to be nail biters.
This is the mission operations center at the
Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
Those two weeks after launch will be like our Super Bowl, World Cup, you pick the analogy.
Years of training comes down to these moments.
The Webb Observatory has 50
major deployments. 50, depending on how you categorize them.
And 178 release mechanisms must work to deploy
Those 50 parts. Every single one of them
must work. Unfolding Webb is hands-down, the most
complicated spacecraft activity we’ve ever done. Then again
nothing about Webb is easy. We’ve never done any of this before.
There’s nothing simple about sending anything into space.
You can’t do it without taking risks.
It’s huge, iconic, golden segmented mirrors
that will help us deliver amazing new images from the cosmos
But in some ways the sunshield is a lot more complicated and it’s just as
essential. Without it, nothing works.
Here we’ve got 5 layers, approximately 8900 square feet
almost the size of 3 tennis courts, of very thin kapton material.
about one, to two-thousandths of an inch thick,
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