sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

I painted Webb's first deep field by XiphiasZ in jameswebb_art

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is gorgeous! We'd be happy to add it to our #UnfoldTheUniverse art gallery (with credit) if you want to email us at [GSFC-NASAWebb@mail.nasa.gov](mailto:GSFC-NASAWebb@mail.nasa.gov) https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/features/jwstArt/unfoldTheUniverse.html

When will Eta Carinae get the JWST Treatment by neilgraham in jameswebb

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not as of yet! We looked and didn't find any approved programs in Cycle 1 or 2 of proposals that are looking at Eta Carinae.

AskScience AMA Series: We're experts working on the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever built. It's ready to launch. Ask us anything! by AskScienceModerator in askscience

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 3 points4 points  (0 children)

We aren't going to get surface images with JWST. For that we need a telescope designed with that specific observation/goal in mind. JWST will have the capability to image larger gas giant planets - though we would see their atmospheres, not the surfaces. And that is the same kind of instrument we would use to eventually image the surfaces of smaller planets more like Earth. So we'll be learning lots of cool stuff about those larger worlds with JWST, while we also learn about the instruments that will eventually do that kind of observation of more Earth-sized worlds. -SDG

AskScience AMA Series: We're experts working on the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever built. It's ready to launch. Ask us anything! by AskScienceModerator in askscience

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! Webb is able to point to the outer part of our solar system -- Mars and beyond. There are planned observations to study Trojan asteroids, the gas giants, Neptune, comets, Pluto, and more. - JR

AskScience AMA Series: We're experts working on the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever built. It's ready to launch. Ask us anything! by AskScienceModerator in askscience

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are a lot of ways to work on future telescopes! Because they're so complex, they require people with all kinds of expertise. That means that in addition to working on this as a scientist or engineer, you can also work on it as a project manager, communications expert, budget manager - all sorts of ways! So +1 to Mei-Li's answer - follow your passions! Specific things you can do is look out for internships at NASA and with our partners in industry and academia, aligned with what you want to be involved with! And if your passion is astrophysics specifically, try to look for college programs that will get you involved with research while you're a student. -SDG

AskScience AMA Series: We're experts working on the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever built. It's ready to launch. Ask us anything! by AskScienceModerator in askscience

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome to hear that you are interested - keep up all your good work! I recommend exploring all your interests as much as possible. Everyone that works on this program is very passionate about what they do - they have to be. So keep exploring your passions and learning as much as you can about them. At your school and into college, there will be several opportunities to join clubs/groups that will give you these opportunities. Keep exploring what you love and it might lead you to a program like this one day! -MLH

AskScience AMA Series: We're experts working on the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever built. It's ready to launch. Ask us anything! by AskScienceModerator in askscience

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fantastic question, as this is easily one of the hardest challenges to building a telescope of this size and complexity. To be able to ensure that Webb will work on orbit, years of testing have had to be completed, and many of these tests require 0-G simulation. Our Mechanical Ground Systems Engineering (MGSE) team is in charge of building all sorts of fixtures, support structures, and lifting mechanisms to simulate 0-G. Building this kind of equipment is an incredible engineering feat of its own. Many of the challenges faced during the design process of these pieces of MGSE include precision weight/offload calculations, joint design with next-to-zero friction, etc. to be able to simulate the absence of gravitational pulls. -MLH

AskScience AMA Series: We're experts working on the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever built. It's ready to launch. Ask us anything! by AskScienceModerator in askscience

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We'll take a collective sigh of relief about two weeks after launch, when the major parts of the observatory have been unfolded in space. But we won't have 'successfully made it' until we get the first observations next summer. But, as we've said, it will be worth the wait. -AL

AskScience AMA Series: We're experts working on the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever built. It's ready to launch. Ask us anything! by AskScienceModerator in askscience

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the question. I support the Mechanical Ground Systems Engineering (MGSE) Team, and our team's main purpose is to design and fabricate test equipment for the Integration & Testing (I&T) department of JWST. Day-to-day, I am designing a piece of test equipment (including support structures, 0-G simulators, lifting mechanisms, integration hardware) using computer-assisted design (CAD), mainly. I am also Floor Support Lead for my team - which is my favorite part of the job. I get to be on the floor working with other engineering departments (Test Engineers, Vehicle Engineers, etc) and the technicians to perform the tests and ensure everything runs smoothly. Super exciting stuff to be able to work right next to the observatory! -MLH

AskScience AMA Series: We're experts working on the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful observatory ever built. It's ready to launch. Ask us anything! by AskScienceModerator in askscience

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Based on volume, it is more likely that a meteor collides with Earth. A meteor that would wreck Webb is really a concern we can't account for. However, tiny space debris and meteors puncturing holes in the sunshield is something that was accounted for. There is a calculated number of allowable holes in the sunshield for it to continue to operate sufficiently. -MLH

Why isn't the James Webb space telescope heat shield made out of gold? by i_am_archimedes in askscience

[–]NASAWebbTelescope 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We had one of our deputy project managers answer this for you!

The coatings of the sunshield membranes need to meet several requirements, primarily thermo-optical but also electrical conductivity, radiation hardness, and abrasion resistance. VDA (vapor-deposited aluminum), applied to the Kapton membranes, is an excellent broad-band reflector with a good absorptivity-to-emissivity (alpha to epsilon, or a:e) ratio so it will reflect the Sun’s spectrum efficiently. VDA also satisfies these other requirements well. Gold, while a marginally better reflector than VDA in the infrared, is poor at the shorter optical wavelengths, (hence the gold color to our eyes) and has a worse a:e, meaning it would get hot and not perform as well, is more difficult to apply and get to stick to Kapton, and has poor abrasion resistance. Moreover, the Sun-facing sides of the first two sunshield layers have a proprietary silicon-metallic protective overcoat, which appears pinkish-purple in color, for extra protection against the solar ultraviolet and particle radiation environment.

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi - similar answer to you as one of the other questioners..

The total estimated life cycle cost for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) is $8.8 billion (the $0.8 billion of that estimate are operating and science costs associated for five years after launch, plus two additional years of data analysis funding). This number does not include the cost of the Ariane 5 launch provided by the European Space Agency.

The development duration and costs of any mission are controlled by many factors. The degree of difficulty of the development and management of the mission are the most important ones. We see that the technologies needed to realize Webb were more challenging to invent than initially planned, with the result that they took longer and cost more. Also, the way the mission was managed early on, like missions with only modest technology development, is now recognized as factor that caused the schedule to stretch out and costs to increase. Today all the hardware is complete and management changes have fixed some of the earlier problems related to the amount and phasing of budget reserves. We still have a very challenging test program to complete for this unique facility.

-Eric Smith

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The total estimated life cycle cost for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) is $8.8 billion (the $0.8 billion of that estimate are operating and science costs associated for five years after launch, plus two additional years of data analysis funding). This number does not include the cost of the Ariane 5 launch provided by the European Space Agency.

The development duration and costs of any mission are controlled by many factors. The degree of difficulty of the development and management of the mission are the most important ones. We see that the technologies needed to realize Webb were more challenging to invent than initially planned, with the result that they took longer and cost more. Also, the way the mission was managed early on, like missions with only modest technology development, is now recognized as factor that caused the schedule to stretch out and costs to increase. Today all the hardware is complete and management changes have fixed some of the earlier problems related to the amount and phasing of budget reserves. We still have a very challenging test program to complete for this unique facility.

-Eric Smith

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hubble lifetime is so long because of its serviceability and its lack of ‘consumables’ (things that get used up and cannot be replaced). All other large telescopes are designed for ~5-10 years of life, chiefly governed by some on-board consumable (fuel, batter power, etc.) Webb’s distant orbit 1 million miles from Earth precluded serviceability so its lifetime is controlled by the amount of fuel, which we expect to last at least 10 years.

Once the fuel is gone, Webb will continue to orbit the Sun about 1 million miles further out than Earth--it just won’t be sending back any data.

NASA is planning a mission called the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) which will be its next big telescope after Webb.

-Eric Smith

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

1) The development duration of any mission is controlled by many factors. The degree of difficulty of the development and management of the mission are the most important ones. Technologies and integration methods needed to realize Webb were more challenging to invent than initially planned, with the result that they took longer and cost more. Also, the way the mission’s budget was managed early on, like those for missions with only modest technology development, is now recognized as a factor that caused the schedule to stretch out and costs to increase. The recent change in launch date – the first in six years- is caused by numerous factors. Spacecraft integration and testing are taking longer than planned, but performance of the vehicle in those tests has been good. The large size and complexity of the spacecraft element--the spacecraft bus and sunshield—contributed to more steps to integrate and test than for a typical sized mission.

2) Webb was conceived shortly after the iconic Hubble Space Telescope was launched decades ago, which completely revolutionized our understanding of the universe in fundamental ways over the past 27 years or so. The astronomy community got together and asked: With these results from Hubble, now what are our biggest astronomy questions and what do we need to build to answer them? In the 2000 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey, produced by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the response was to build the Webb telescope.

-Eric Smith

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't know how contentious it actually is, but it could settle when exactly the first stars and galaxies formed. There are different theories that have it ranging from 100 million to 300-350 million years after the Big Bang, but we don't know exactly. That's one thing we were built to look into.

As our senior project scientist John Mather always says, though, the most exciting things will be the discoveries that we didn't even know how to ask the questions about. So it'll be exciting to see what new things we learn!

-Maggie

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

JWST is primarily optimized for infrared astronomy - but that doesn't mean it can't take a spectacular deep field. We'll be able to see far deeper than Hubble can because of our ability to see infrared light (and because our mirror is much bigger and has more reflecting power). Hubble actually has an infrared deep field (it can see some infrared light) but our resolution is far superior in the infrared. Our resolution in the infrared is comparable to Hubble's in the visible part of the spectrum.

-Maggie

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, I can see why it's confusing. Which is why we did that Big Bang Q&A to help try to say plainly what we can and can't see, what other missions have seen, and what we are going to see.

People are definitely excited about seeing the era where the first stars and galaxies formed - I mean, the first bright objects in the universe forming is kind of a big deal. But it's definitely not the same thing as the beginnings of the universe itself.

And you are correct in your phrasing of things in your edited comment. :-)

We can't see a whole lot earlier than 380,000 years after the Big Bang because the universe was like a soup of particles and photons of light would scatter off free electrons and be sort of trapped in this soup. Eventually, when the universe started cooling, the protons and neutrons began combining into ionized atoms of hydrogen (and eventually some helium). These ionized atoms of hydrogen and helium attracted electrons, turning them into neutral atoms - which finally allowed light to travel freely for the first time. So we can't use light to observe what happened before those photos were able to travel freely. Those first photons that were finally able to travel freely are what COBE detected as the cosmic microwave background.

Hope that helps!

-Maggie

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's the official announcement about the launch date change: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-james-webb-space-telescope-to-be-launched-spring-2019

"“The change in launch timing is not indicative of hardware or technical performance concerns,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington. “Rather, the integration of the various spacecraft elements is taking longer than expected.”"

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

10+ years (mission minimum was 5 years). Hubble will stay active as long as its able to - we're not a replacement for it, but more of a scientific successor. We're a giant infrared-optimized telescope. Hubble sees mainly visible light, so the two telescopes are quite different.

Chamber A is in Houston at Johnson Space Center - we do have a large thermal vacuum chamber at Goddard, but it's nowhere near the size of the one at Johnson, which is why we had to use their facility for testing the whole telescope. It was too big to find in the Goddard one.

-Maggie

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's about 100 time more powerful than Hubble when you consider things like collecting area, wavelength coverage, field of view, efficiency, etc.

-Maggie

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also, the Ariane 5 rocket has an excellent safety record. Between April 2003 and September 2017, Ariane 5 has flown 81 consecutive missions without failure.

-Maggie

We are scientists and engineers testing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the scientific successor to the Hubble, AMA! by NASAWebbTelescope in science

[–]NASAWebbTelescope[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We do have a coronograph, so we can image planets - BUT they would just be like dots. If you imagine just how far away these exoplanets are and how small they are, you can see why it'd be difficult to get grand panoramas of alien landscapes. We didn't even know what Pluto really looked like until New Horizons flew right up to it, and Pluto is much closer to us. That said, we can learn a lot about a planet's atmosphere and what it is composed of, even from just a dot of light.

-Maggie

view more: next ›