Success! Webb Sunshield Now Fully Deployed - JWST by Nancy_A
If you felt a little more tension – and perhaps more goosebumps — in the Universe today, it’s probably because the James Webb Space Telescope’s sunshield is now completely and successfully deployed! All five layers of the sunshield have been fully extended and “tensioned” into the final taut, kite-shaped configuration. This is a huge accomplishment for the entire international Webb mission
NASA livestreamed events for the final sunshield tensioning, showing the events in Mission Operations Center at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. The conversations on the communications loop provided an inside look at the intricate operation taking place remotely, thousands of kilometers/miles from Earth.
The final sunshield deployment confirmation came 10 days after JWST left Earth. The fifth and final layer of the 21 by 14 meters sunshade was pulled taut, as the telescope was about 916,000 km away.“The membrane tensioning phase of sunshield deployment is especially challenging because there are complex interactions between the structures, the tensioning mechanisms, the cables and the membranes,” said James Cooper, NASA’s Webb sunshield manager, at Goddard Space Flight Center.
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