What are you doing today?

[DT]

Jealous! Just you wait, pal.

I don't know what was up with that Dutch Tilt ...

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Electric blanket has been switched on.

A glass of wine has been poured.

 

[lizkat]

Setting two alarm clocks in case I oversleep tomorrow... NASA coverage to start at 6am.

Tune in as NASA and the ESA launch the next great space telescope

Follow along as astronomers start unwrapping a telescope-sized gift at 7 am US Eastern.

arstechnica.com

I want in on the excitement of the final countdown to the NASA-Arianespace launch from the European Spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, of the James Webb Space Telescope. I can't even imagine the stress levels involved as the nearly $10 billion critter nears its moment of takeoff for a million-mile trip to its planned orbit.

Webb Telescope Prepares to Ascend, With an Eye Toward Our Origins (Published 2021)

The biggest space telescope in history aims to answer astronomy’s oldest question: How did we get from the Big Bang to here?

www.nytimes.com

If all goes well — always a dubious prospect in the space business — the telescope will be loaded onto an Ariane 5 rocket and, on the morning of Dec. 25, blast off on a million-mile journey to a spot beyond the moon where gravitational forces commingle to create a stable orbit around the sun.

Over the next 29 days on its way up, the chrysalis will unfold into a telescope in a series of movements more complicated than anything ever attempted in space, with 344 “single points of failure,” in NASA lingo, and far from the help of any astronaut or robot should things become snarled. “Six months of high anxiety,” engineers and astronomers call it.

Well we do know the telescope got loaded onto the rocket, and the assembly has rolled out to the pad

James Webb Telescope Rolls to the Pad Aboard an Ariane 5 Rocket - NASA

Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope onboard, is rolled out to the launch pad, Thursday, Dec. 23, 2021.

www.nasa.gov

After launch and achievement of orbit, then comes the real stress test: six months more of stepping through all the phases to the telescope's job-readiness:

James Webb Space Telescope Post-Launch Deployment Timeline

webbtelescope.org

 

[DT]

Hahaha, this is amazing, the Tesla Christmas update, didn't even notice the first time the trunk opens too

The headlights are fully programmable LED matrix, so they projected the word T E S L A (from each) onto the garage door

 

[chengengaun]

Setting two alarm clocks in case I oversleep tomorrow... NASA coverage to start at 6am.

Tune in as NASA and the ESA launch the next great space telescope

Follow along as astronomers start unwrapping a telescope-sized gift at 7 am US Eastern.

arstechnica.com

I want in on the excitement of the final countdown to the NASA-Arianespace launch from the European Spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, of the James Webb Space Telescope. I can't even imagine the stress levels involved as the nearly $10 billion critter nears its moment of takeoff for a million-mile trip to its planned orbit.

Webb Telescope Prepares to Ascend, With an Eye Toward Our Origins (Published 2021)

The biggest space telescope in history aims to answer astronomy’s oldest question: How did we get from the Big Bang to here?

www.nytimes.com

Well we do know the telescope got loaded onto the rocket, and the assembly has rolled out to the pad

James Webb Telescope Rolls to the Pad Aboard an Ariane 5 Rocket - NASA

Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope onboard, is rolled out to the launch pad, Thursday, Dec. 23, 2021.

www.nasa.gov

After launch and achievement of orbit, then comes the real stress test: six months more of stepping through all the phases to the telescope's job-readiness:

James Webb Space Telescope Post-Launch Deployment Timeline

webbtelescope.org

NASA livestream on YouTube:

 

[Apple fanboy]

Back from my morning walk with Mrs AFB.
As both our house signs arrived in the last few days (although both ordered months ago from different companies), I put one up on the gate. The one on the house requires some drilling. I’d have no problem doing that today, but Mrs AFB thinks the neighbours might think it’s antisocial.
So it can wait until tomorrow.

I’ll vacuum after lunch. Scrambled eggs on toast. My weekly bread intake.
No other real plans for today. Probably tweak my fantasy football team at some point before tomorrow’s games as many are cancelled.

 

[Edd]

I’m heading out for a Christmas ski day. My wife is in the ski industry and has to work there today so I may as well get some runs in. And it’s snowing!

 

[chengengaun]

Setting two alarm clocks in case I oversleep tomorrow... NASA coverage to start at 6am.

Tune in as NASA and the ESA launch the next great space telescope

Follow along as astronomers start unwrapping a telescope-sized gift at 7 am US Eastern.

arstechnica.com

I want in on the excitement of the final countdown to the NASA-Arianespace launch from the European Spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, of the James Webb Space Telescope. I can't even imagine the stress levels involved as the nearly $10 billion critter nears its moment of takeoff for a million-mile trip to its planned orbit.

Webb Telescope Prepares to Ascend, With an Eye Toward Our Origins (Published 2021)

The biggest space telescope in history aims to answer astronomy’s oldest question: How did we get from the Big Bang to here?

www.nytimes.com

Well we do know the telescope got loaded onto the rocket, and the assembly has rolled out to the pad

James Webb Telescope Rolls to the Pad Aboard an Ariane 5 Rocket - NASA

Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope onboard, is rolled out to the launch pad, Thursday, Dec. 23, 2021.

www.nasa.gov

After launch and achievement of orbit, then comes the real stress test: six months more of stepping through all the phases to the telescope's job-readiness:

James Webb Space Telescope Post-Launch Deployment Timeline

webbtelescope.org

Wow, that was a flawless launch! Glad to see the solar panels deployed. The JWST is now truly on the way.

 

[lizkat]

NASA livestream on YouTube:

Perfect launch... so the Europeans are off the hook now, they got it absolutely on the money, maybe with a little help from Santa and his reindeer, who knows?!

That was definitely worth getting up early for any morning, but a great way to launch Christmas 2021.

 

[Roller]

Perfect launch... so the Europeans are off the hook now, they got it absolutely on the money, maybe with a little help from Santa and his reindeer, who knows?!

That was definitely worth getting up early for any morning, but a great way to launch Christmas 2021.

I was just about to post the same thing. Certainly was worth an early rise to watch, though the cloudy skies limited the view of the Ariane as it ascended. It'll take the telescope about a month to reach its destination at L2, and another five to become fully operational. The engineering is astounding, with about 300 single points of failure and no way to address them as with Hubble.

I know there are many who feel that the $10B cost isn't worth it with all the problems here on Earth, but I compare it to the almost $770B Congress just approved for the Pentagon for just one year. Our attempts to satisfy our curiosity about the universe and the world around us are a critical part of who we are.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Back from my morning walk with Mrs AFB.
As both our house signs arrived in the last few days (although both ordered months ago from different companies), I put one up on the gate. The one on the house requires some drilling. I’d have no problem doing that today, but Mrs AFB thinks the neighbours might think it’s antisocial.
So it can wait until tomorrow.

I’ll vacuum after lunch. Scrambled eggs on toast. My weekly bread intake.
No other real plans for today. Probably tweak my fantasy football team at some point before tomorrow’s games as many are cancelled.

Slept late, and enjoyed a long and leisurely lie in (and needed it; normally, the flu vaccine has no effect whatsoever on me - I think that the conjunction of the Covid booster and the flu vaccine did however leave me feeling a lot more tired than usual) I was exhausted yesterday, as well.

Then again, as Decent Brother is not here, there is no one to please - or, nobody whose needs I ought to meet - other than myself.

Why stress myself?

Complicated and elaborate dining can be deferrred to tomorrow, if needs be.

Your idea of scrambled eggs (or, an omelette) sounds ever more enticing.

Enjoy your day.

 

[lizkat]

I was just about to post the same thing. Certainly was worth an early rise to watch, though the cloudy skies limited the view of the Ariane as it ascended. It'll take the telescope about a month to reach its destination at L2, and another five to become fully operational. The engineering is astounding, with about 300 single points of failure and no way to address them as with Hubble.

I know there are many who feel that the $10B cost isn't worth it with all the problems here on Earth, but I compare it to the almost $770B Congress just approved for the Pentagon for just one year. Our attempts to satisfy our curiosity about the universe and the world around us are a critical part of who we are.

I couldn't help thinking, earlier this morning, about the summer of 1969 when my grandfather sat in a rocking chair up at my sister's farm with my then toddler nephew on his lap, watching Walter Cronkite narrate the first moon landing. My granddad was softly tapping the arm of that chair with his hand and saying to my little nephew, "Will you look at that, a man on the moon..." meanwhile my nephew was watching intently and repeating "Man on the moon, papa: man on the moon!".

Heh, yeah, and the kid did grow up to become an aeronautical engineer. I have no idea what he does, and much of it is classified. "So what's up?" I ask periodically. He shrugs and laughs and says "Metal, air, water."

But for my grandfather, those moments in 1969 were almost beyond belief. After all, he'd been a kid himself when he read about the Wright Brothers' first flight in a newspaper in 1903. And I remember him saying in the late 40s when Chuck Yeager was testing the X1's ability to go supersonic, "that Yeager is a brave fellow to go up so high and fly so fast in a little plane like that." So imagine then during that first moon landing, what all could have been going through my granddad's mind, realizing how far our science and engineering had grown within just his own lifetime. I've been thinking about that lately when reading up on the Webb telescope's planned orbit a million miles away, and before that about the adventures of the two Voyagers that have flown on now past Pluto and into interstellar space. Human desire to know more and to "dream big" seems irrepressibly wired into us, along with the will to try to make it happen. Seems like an extra bonus past evolutionary pressure, but what do I know. Maybe sea birds and geese dream about space flight too. But we're actually doing it.

Meanwhile I'll probably end up dreaming my way through a serious nap later today, having gone to bed pretty late and still gotten up so early to watch that launch. That nap will be a rarity for me but a welcome one on a rainy Christmas afternoon... all the festive snow of yesterday has been melted away by rising temps and ongoing rainshowers.

"So that was winter," a friend remarked while phoning to convey Xmas greetings. Hah. An optimist!

 

[Scepticalscribe]

I couldn't help thinking, earlier this morning, about the summer of 1969 when my grandfather sat in a rocking chair up at my sister's farm with my then toddler nephew on his lap, watching Walter Cronkite narrate the first moon landing. My granddad was softly tapping the arm of that chair with his hand and saying to my little nephew, "Will you look at that, a man on the moon..." meanwhile my nephew was watching intently and repeating "Man on the moon, papa: man on the moon!".

Heh, yeah, and the kid did grow up to become an aeronautical engineer. I have no idea what he does, and much of it is classified. "So what's up?" I ask periodically. He shrugs and laughs and says "Metal, air, water."

But for my grandfather, those moments in 1969 were almost beyond belief. After all, he'd been a kid himself when he read about the Wright Brother's first flight in a newspaper in 1903. And I remember him saying in the late 40s when Chuck Yeager was testing the X1's ability to go supersonic, "that Yeager is a brave fellow to go up so high and fly so fast in a little plane like that." So imagine then during that first moon landing, what all could have been going through my granddad's mind, realizing how far our science and engineering had grown within just his own lifetime. I've been thinking about that lately when reading up on the Webb telescope's planned orbit a million miles away, and before that about the adventures of the two Voyagers that have flown on now past Pluto and into interstellar space. Human desire to know more and to "dream big" seems irrepressibly wired into us, along with the will to try to make it happen. Seems like an extra bonus past evolutionary pressure, but what do I know. Maybe sea birds and geese dream about space flight too. But we're actually doing it.

Meanwhile I'll probably end up dreaming my way through a serious nap later today, having gone to bed pretty late and still gotten up so early to watch that launch. That nap will be a rarity for me but a welcome one on a rainy Christmas afternoon... all the festive snow of yesterday has been melted away by rising temps and ongoing rainshowers.

"So that was winter," a friend remarked while phoning to convey Xmas greetings. Hah. An optimist!

Wonderful post.

And it brought me to thinking of my own maternal grandmother, born in the 1880s, who trained as a teacher in the years immediately before the First World War. She was the first woman in her family - her own mother had died young - to get an education and have an independent career; as a teacher, (and she was known to have been an exceptional teacher) she was asked by the authorities to postpone her retirement twice, finally retiring at the age of 67. My mother used to say to me "you come from a long line of independent women".

In common with my mother, and indeed, myself, she loved to travel, (not that circumstances allowed her to do so as often as she would have liked) and always, but always, took her holidays (both the very fact that she took holidays, and the fact that she took them apart from her husband, - he had his own separate holidays, he liked (horse) racing and attended racing festivals - would have been considered very unusual at the time) independently of her husband. She was an enthusiastic member of the teachers' union as well (my mother remembered her cycling with determination and enthusiasm - her husband discouraged her from driving - to attend union meetings in the 1940s, the war years and immediately afterwards) and my mother always suspected that there were times when she voted left (Labour), as did my mother and my mother's eldest sister.

Anyway, the first time she boarded a plane in her life was in the 1950s, - which excited her and thrilled her, my mother had always admired her openness to new ideas and new experiences and new worlds - whereas the males in that family were a lot more closed - when she took what was described as "a foreign" holiday with my mother, her youngest daughter (indeed, her youngest child), which they both loved.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Mrs AFB has just put dinner in the oven. The usual. A chicken breast and some green pepper. We will have it with boiled rice and some other steamed vegetables (probably broccoli).
I vacuumed and cleaned the kitchen earlier.

 

[lizkat]

Wonderful post.

And it brought me to thinking of my own maternal grandmother, born in the 1880s, who trained as a teacher (the first woman in her family - her own mother had died young - to get an education and have an independent career; as a teacher, she was asked by the authorities to postpone her retirement by two years, finally retiring at the age of 67 - in the years shortly before the First World War - my mother used to say to me "you come from a long line of independent women").

In common with my mother, and indeed, myself, she loved to travel, (not that circumstances allowed her to do so as often as she would have liked) and always took her holidays independently of her husband. She was an enthusiastic menber of the teachers' union as well (my mother remembered her cycling with determination and enthusiasm - her husband discouraged her fro driving - to attend union meetings in the 1940s, the war years and immediately afterwards) and my mother always suspected that there were times when she voted left (Labour), as did my mother and y mother's eldest sister.

Anyway, the fist time she boarded a plane in her life was in the 1950s, - which thrilled her, my mother always admired her openness to new ideas and new experiences and new worlds - whereas the males in that family were a lot more closed - when she took what was described as "a foreign" holiday with my mother, her youngest daughter (indeed, her youngest child), which they both loved.

oh my goodness your grandmother reminds me of mine... also a teacher and independent-minded, as were my great and great-great aunts. My grandfather too discouraged my grandmother from the idea of driving a car.

However, she was determined and one day knowing he was at a bank conference elsewhere for two days, persuaded the guy who did their yardwork to bring the car from a rear driveway closer to back porch steps, telling him she had some errands to run next morning but she wasn't very good yet at backing up so it would be hard for her to maneuver the car from where it had been parked nose-in around the side of the porch.

The nerve of her! Anyway he did as requested and she took the day from breakfast forward to drive that car forward out of the driveway and to a rural area outside town where she knew the dirt roads there looped around a couple dairy farms. By day's end she also knew how to drive in reverse!

She eventually confessed to my grandpa what she'd done and he got over being annoyed "in a while..." she said. To hear her tell it later, that "while" was not a matter of hours. Apparently the usual dinner conversations about news and politics became limited to "Pass the bread if you will, please" for a matter of almost a week. After that he apparently didn't mind if she used the car to run errands while he was at work, to which he walked.

So she had certainly broken the constraints on women driving in that household... and my great aunt and one of my great-great aunts, both retired teachers and living with my grandparents by then, promptly both learned to drive with my grandmother as instructor, and then went out and bought cars of their own in 1938 with some of their retirement savings. They did NOT consult my grandpa about it, either. He was a banker, and he learned about his sister's Pontiac purchase when he was discussing a farm loan with the car dealer's son.

"Really?" he asked when the kid commented on the purchase.

"Oh yes, really," the car dealer's son replied. "The coupe. She'll have it end of the month."

Heh. And that was just the great-aunt. Another shoe would drop later when one of the great-great aunts also bought a Pontiac, that one a business coupe: more room. More silences at the dinner table, too, I'm sure!

 

[Scepticalscribe]

oh my goodness your grandmother reminds me of mine... also a teacher and independent-minded, as were my great and great-great aunts. My grandfather too discouraged my grandmother from the idea of driving a car.

However, she was determined and one day knowing he was at a bank conference elsewhere for two days, persuaded the guy who did their yardwork to bring the car from a rear driveway closer to back porch steps, telling him she had some errands to run next morning but she wasn't very good yet at backing up so it would be hard for her to maneuver the car from where it had been parked nose-in around the side of the porch.

The nerve of her! Anyway he did as requested and she took the day from breakfast forward to drive that car forward out of the driveway and to a rural area outside town where she knew the dirt roads there looped around a couple dairy farms. By day's end she also knew how to drive in reverse!

She eventually confessed to my grandpa what she'd done and he got over being annoyed "in a while..." she said. To hear her tell it later, that "while" was not a matter of hours. Apparently the usual dinner conversations about news and politics became limited to "Pass the bread if you will, please" for a matter of almost a week. After that he apparently didn't mind if she used the car to run errands while he was at work, to which he walked.

So she had certainly broken the constraints on women driving in that household... and my great aunt and one of my great-great aunts, both retired teachers and living with my grandparents by then, promptly both learned to drive with my grandmother as instructor, and then went out and bought cars of their own in 1938 with some of their retirement savings. They did NOT consult my grandpa about it, either. He was a banker, and he learned about his sister's Pontiac purchase when he was discussing a farm loan with the car dealer's son.

"Really?" he asked when the kid commented on the purchase.

"Oh yes, really," the car dealer's son replied. "The coupe. She'll have it end of the month."

Heh. And that was just the great-aunt. Another shoe would drop later when one of the great-great aunts also bought a Pontiac, that one a business coupe: more room. More silences at the dinner table, too, I'm sure!

Brilliant post, and a wonderful - and a fascinating and utterly compelling - slice of social history. That is hilarious.

My grandmother always said that one of her greatest regrets was not learning to drive, and she loved - thrilled to - the fact that my mother could - and did - drive (not that my mother was taught to drive in the house where she grew up; they were comfortably off, and big into education, but a lot less so on matters such as mobility - social, political and actual - for women).

Mind you, two further things occur: My own mother's first ever car was - snigger, wait for it, yes - a coupe, bought as a result of a promotion - she was promoted to succeed her boss who had died - which had my father wholly green with envy. That is absolutely hilarious.

The fact that my father had monopolised to some extent (and this was subconscious, in his case, or, perhaps an expression of the lure of the idea of a "car" as an extension of self-image, rather than a desire to control female mobility) - or, rather, to be more precise, had first call on, or priority on - the "family" car (which she had always contributed to, financially, so that she could argue it was "their" car, - the family car - rather than "his" car), served to motivate her to buy her own car.

Anyway - and, this is the second thing, and it goes right back to @lizkat's brilliant post on the reasons women were originally "allowed" to drive, or, "accepted" or "tolerated" behind the wheel while on the road by the males in their family, - in other words, not usually for "private" reasons (pleasure, private pursuits, personal hobbies or interests) - but for necessary reasons (shopping, errands, taking kids to the doctor, or other necessary trips, and, in fairness, also attending her classes when she went to college), reasons that some of those males belatedly realised were also of considerable convenience to themselves.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

oh my goodness your grandmother reminds me of mine... also a teacher and independent-minded, as were my great and great-great aunts. My grandfather too discouraged my grandmother from the idea of driving a car.

However, she was determined and one day knowing he was at a bank conference elsewhere for two days, persuaded the guy who did their yardwork to bring the car from a rear driveway closer to back porch steps, telling him she had some errands to run next morning but she wasn't very good yet at backing up so it would be hard for her to maneuver the car from where it had been parked nose-in around the side of the porch.

The nerve of her! Anyway he did as requested and she took the day from breakfast forward to drive that car forward out of the driveway and to a rural area outside town where she knew the dirt roads there looped around a couple dairy farms. By day's end she also knew how to drive in reverse!

She eventually confessed to my grandpa what she'd done and he got over being annoyed "in a while..." she said. To hear her tell it later, that "while" was not a matter of hours. Apparently the usual dinner conversations about news and politics became limited to "Pass the bread if you will, please" for a matter of almost a week. After that he apparently didn't mind if she used the car to run errands while he was at work, to which he walked.

So she had certainly broken the constraints on women driving in that household... and my great aunt and one of my great-great aunts, both retired teachers and living with my grandparents by then, promptly both learned to drive with my grandmother as instructor, and then went out and bought cars of their own in 1938 with some of their retirement savings. They did NOT consult my grandpa about it, either. He was a banker, and he learned about his sister's Pontiac purchase when he was discussing a farm loan with the car dealer's son.

"Really?" he asked when the kid commented on the purchase.

"Oh yes, really," the car dealer's son replied. "The coupe. She'll have it end of the month."

Heh. And that was just the great-aunt. Another shoe would drop later when one of the great-great aunts also bought a Pontiac, that one a business coupe: more room. More silences at the dinner table, too, I'm sure!

Mind you, your comment about the dinner conversations "about news and politics" also reminds me of some of my mother's recollections - and the passage of time, and the lingering echoes of the ripples of the tides of history.

My maternal grandfather had come from a long line of crofters, or small farmers, who had earned a hard living from hard land, and whose children, intelligent and ambitious, advanced socially through education; all of his brothers escaped the land through education, becoming teachers (as my mother used to say, "there is a lot of teaching DNA in your ancestry"), while he, the youngest, a clever, dry, sardonic man, avoided the teaching profession entirely, becoming a civil servant instead, and was in the (control of) Food Production section of the Agriculture Ministry during both world wars.

While he had a gendered view of the world, and my mother sometimes used to wonder why they (her parents) had married one another, she vividly recalled some of their quiet, sombre, dinner conversations in the years immediately preceding the Second World War.

She was the youngest (by a margin of several years) in a large family and - by then - was a small child still in primary school, sitting alone with her parents in the large, formal, dining room. Small children listened - and said little or nothing - in such settings at such times.

"The boys" - her brothers - were all away at boarding school, her eldest brother at university, her eldest sister in the civil service, - their house, one of those quite lovely rural, rectory style houses (@Apple fanboy would know the sort of house I am referring to well), sash windows and high ceilings ("a nightmare that cost a fortune to heat in winter," was my mother's barbed remark, reluctantly adding, "okay, well, yes, it was lovely in summer, especially the gardens,"), but she vividly recalled those intense discussions, where they conversed in low worried voices - as absolute intellectual equals, both educated, thoughtful, intelligent, informed, each respecting what the other had to say - about how dangerous they thought Hitler was, and how "sooner or later" they were of the opinion that "someone" would have to stop him, and how they were convinced that war was inevitable.

Both her parents had lived through the First World War with its stratospheric casualties - indeed, they had married in the middle of it, and it informed their view of the subsequent conflict.

 

[AG_PhamD]

NASA livestream on YouTube:

On my thoughts exactly. It will be cool to see what the JWST will bring back interns of scientific discovery, assuming everything works to plan. If was a NASA enginner in charge of any aspect of that program I would be be terrified. So many things that could go wrong. They’ve had almost 30 years to work on this, so let’s hope they get it right! If everything goes to plan this will be a truly an amazing engineering accomplishment.

It’s just kinda crazy in my mind they only built one of these. They’ve already invested so much in developing JWST building a second one wouldn’t be that much more expensive. If this one fails then they would have had a backup. Plus, it only has a lifespan of 6-10 years, maybe a little more if they’re lucky. I’m not sure we’ll see a successor in anywhere close to that timeframe.

I guess we’ll know in about a month if everything had unfurled correctly. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[Roller]

On my thoughts exactly. It will be cool to see what the JWST will bring back interns of scientific discovery, assuming everything works to plan. If was a NASA enginner in charge of any aspect of that program I would be be terrified. So many things that could go wrong. They’ve had almost 30 years to work on this, so let’s hope they get it right! If everything goes to plan this will be a truly an amazing engineering accomplishment.

It’s just kinda crazy in my mind they only built one of these. They’ve already invested so much in developing JWST building a second one wouldn’t be that much more expensive. If this one fails then they would have had a backup. Plus, it only has a lifespan of 6-10 years, maybe a little more if they’re lucky. I’m not sure we’ll see a successor in anywhere close to that timeframe.

I guess we’ll know in about a month if everything had unfurled correctly. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.

I suspect the cost of building and storing copies of the assembled telescope or even just its components was prohibitive, though they did manufacture spares for some parts. For example, the ring that attaches the telescope to the booster malfunctioned recently and was replaced with a backup. The primary reason for the mission's lifespan is its limited fuel supply, which will be consumed to periodically correct the telescope's position orbiting L2. I've read speculation that a robotic fuel resupply mission could be considered at some point in the future.

One of the coolest aspects (pun intended) of the JWST is its sensitivity to long wavelengths of radiation. I hadn't thought about this before, but apparently that's needed because light from the most distant/oldest objects the telescope is expected to observe will have been severely redshifted. Hence the need to keep the equipment at such cold temperatures. One instrument will operate at 7 degrees C above absolute zero.

Although it'll take almost a month for the JWST to arrive at its destination, some critical events will happen within the first two weeks. These include deployment of the sunshield and the primary and secondary mirrors. I agree that it must be terrifying to be back here on Earth and wait for events to unfold (pun again intended) if you've spent much of your career working on Webb. However, I'll note that this is not uncommon in science and technology, where one may devote decades to a line of research that doesn't pan out. When that occurs, though, there is solace that failures often do as much to advance the state-of-the-art as do successes.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Decent Brother phoned (bless him) and we had a good chat; I am reliably informed that Other Brother had phoned earlier, (I did hear the phone ring) but I had not yet left my bed at that time.