Submitted via IRC for chromas
After years of busted budgets and schedules, NASA says its $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope is ready for testing and on track for launch in 2018. [...] NASA has completed an initial round of laser-based optical measurements, known as a Center of Curvature Test, to determine that the telescope's 18 hexagonal mirror elements are precisely aligned to produce sharp images. In the months ahead, the mirror will be subjected to the stresses and strains it's expected to experience during launch. Then the mirror's alignment will be checked again to make sure it'll work correctly in space.
NASA also says the fifth and last layer of the telescope's sunshield has been completed and delivered to a facility in California. The reflective, foldable sunshield is designed to keep the telescope's sensitive electronics and optics from overheating. Eventually, all the components will be combined to create the finished telescope, and then loaded onto a European Ariane 5 rocket for launch in October 2018. The telescope will be sent to a gravitational balance point beyond Earth known as Sun-Earth L-2.
Source: http://www.geekwire.com/2016/nasa-ames-webb-space-telescope-testing/
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:33AM
Cool gravity contour plots showing L1 through L5, http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2013/08/20/lagrange-points/ [mrreid.org]
(Score: 2) by Some call me Tim on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:38AM
Cool, thanks for that! I can't wait for the awesome pictures from this scope. I hope they get everything right because it will be a long time before we can mount a repair mission to L2.
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:53AM
I don't understand why that page seems to think that L3 would be useful. How in the world do you get communications from an L3 satellite? The sun blocks all communication: you'd need a constellation of communication relays in various, less-stable orbits in order to communicate with an L3 sat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:26PM
I don't understand why that page seems to think that L3 would be useful. How in the world do you get communications from an L3 satellite? The sun blocks all communication: you'd need a constellation of communication relays in various, less-stable orbits in order to communicate with an L3 sat.
You'd only need 1 comm satellite in either the L4 or L5 point to relay the information from L3 point.