Webb Telescope Rescheduled To Launch Christmas Morning

The Ariane 5 rocket carrying NASA's James Webb Space Telescope rolled out to the launch pad on Dec. 23, 2021.
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Successful launch this morning. View of Webb after separation. On its way at 21,000 mph to L2 point, one million miles away, and about one month.

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This animation shows how the Webb will unfold its sunshade and its primary mirrors.

 
Good shares! Great to wake up and see this beast has gotten up safe. Now to make sure it gets oriented right and all starts up and runs tip top.

This one would be impossible to “fit for glasses” or any other maintenance need. Lol
 
yes sir... thanks for sharing.

Please post any images. Business & kids can take me away from such news from time to time
 
Here's a view of the Webb deployments enroute to the L2 point. Full deployment is 13 days from launch, January 6. Then two more weeks to its destination, then five months of extensive testing and setup.

This link has details of each deployment with clickable icons at the top and a Where Is Webb real time status line and parameters.
Deployment Explorer Webb/NASA

Link to find current status and flight parameters. After 3 1/2 days, currently 300,000 miles from Earth at 2,200 mph.
Where Is Webb? NASA/Webb

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We have learned so much about the universe in the last 15 years from Hubble and Juno. This one will hopefully take us to the next level.
 
Webb’s engineers have released and rolled up the sunshield covers that protected the thin layers of Webb’s sunshield during launch.
The deployment took about an hour.

Over the next three days of planned activities, engineers will deploy the sunshield mid-booms which extend the five left and right sunshield membranes, before proceeding with sunshield tensioning. This is a delicate operation; each membrane is 2/1000 inch thick.

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Webb just passed the halfway point to L2. Left and right sunshields are now deployed. Next step is tensioning the multi-layers, a two-day task.
 
Webb sunshield layer tensioning in progress. Layers 3 of 5 complete. Speed has decreased to 1,100 mph as distance to L2 is 63% complete.
 
Success! Webb Sunshield tensioning of all five layers is complete. Next, Secondary Mirror deployment begins followed by Primary Mirror deployment possibly by Friday, day 13.
 
I won't believe any of this has happened until @Rock Strongo explains it.
 
Why was I thinking getting out to L2 was going to take months? Maybe I read the extensive testing period as transit period.

Super cool stuff.
 
Secondary Mirror Deployment Completed today. The 2.4-foot-wide secondary mirror sits attached to a tripod opposite the primary mirror. Its task is to concentrate the light collected by the gold-coated primary mirror through an opening at the center to the third mirror behind the primary which reflects it to the telescope's instruments. Primary mirror deployment could begin tomorrow.

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The port or left wing of the primary mirror is now fully deployed and latched. Each wing holds three of the 18 mirror segments. Starboard wing, tomorrow followed by several days of moving and aligning each of the 18 mirror segments. Then five months of fine tuning the segments so they work as one mirror.

The Webb has completed 70% of the distance to L2 at 650,000 miles from Earth traveling now at 900 mph. Temperature on the cold side has decreased to -327 deg. F on its way to its operational -394 deg. F. So far, everything has worked perfectly; It's amazing what the NASA team has accomplished.

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How soon till we see its first images?
 
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