NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Emerges Successfully from Final Thermal Vacuum Test
Technicians and engineers needed to take special precautions when preparing, and transporting Webb’s spacecraft element for entry into Northrop Grumman’s environmental testing chambers. (Credit: Northrop Grumman)
LOS ANGELES (NASA PR) — NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has successfully cleared another critical testing milestone, taking this ambitious observatory one step closer to its 2021 launch. The spacecraft has gone through its final thermal vacuum test meant to ensure that its hardware will function electronically in the vacuum of space, and withstand the extreme temperature variations it will encounter on its mission.
One half of the Webb observatory, known as the “spacecraft element,” completed this testing at the facilities of Northrop Grumman, the mission’s lead industrial partner, in Los Angeles. The other half of Webb, which consists of the telescope and science instruments, has already successfully completed its thermal vacuum testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston prior to delivery at Northrop Grumman last year.
The James Webb Space Telescope’s spacecraft element being prepared for entry into Northrop Grumman’s large thermal vacuum chamber in Los Angeles, California. (Credit: Northrop Grumman)
In the most recent major environmental test, technicians and engineers locked the Webb spacecraft element inside a special thermal vacuum chamber. The testing team drained the atmosphere from the room to replicate the vacuum of space, and exposed the Webb spacecraft element to a wide range of hot and cold temperatures, spanning from minus 235 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 148 degrees Celsius) to a sweltering 215 degrees Fahrenheit (102 degrees Celsius). This variation of temperatures ensures the spacecraft will survive the extreme conditions it will actually experience in space.
The spacecraft element consists of the “bus,” which is the equipment that actually flies the observatory in space, plus the revolutionary five-layer tennis-court-size sunshield that will keep Webb’s sensitive optics and instruments in the shade, and at their required super-cold operating temperatures. The spacecraft element is imperative to the success of Webb’s scientific goals, and must be thoroughly tested and validated for flight.
Webb’s spacecraft being lifted into Northrop Grumman’s thermal vacuum chamber for environmental testing to ensure that its hardware will function in the vacuum of space. (Credit: Northrop Grumman)
With the completion of this latest thermal vacuum test, all of Webb’s components have been exposed to the varied conditions that they will encounter during launch, and while in orbit a million miles away from Earth.
“The teams from Northrop Grumman and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center are to be commended for a successful spacecraft thermal vacuum test, dedicating long hours to get where we are now,” said Jeanne Davis, program manager for the James Webb Space Telescope Program. “This incredible accomplishment paves the way for the next major milestone, which is to integrate the telescope and the spacecraft elements.”
The next steps will be to join both halves of Webb to form the fully assembled observatory and complete a final round of deployments, testing and evaluation prior to launch. A full deployment of the spacecraft element will verify that Webb is ready to proceed to the launch site.
The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
For more information about Webb, visit: www.nasa.gov/webb
30 responses to “NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Emerges Successfully from Final Thermal Vacuum Test”
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JWST is the perfect example of how letting technology mature at a more natural pace will get you pretty close to the same thing if you had just been more realistic with your program goals and scope and performed several stepwise programs instead of one giant leap. By the time JWST is operational we could have used the upcoming wide diameter payload fairings to launch a much less complicated system of mirrors and heat shields that could have been assembled in orbit and boosted to the desired orbit. All the while we could have easily have had one or two intermediate solutions of less complexity and ambition operating over the past 18 years.
That’s a perfect example of 20/20 hindsight. Why bother to plan and execute ambitious missions that require a push to make the technology mature? SpaceX’s method of recovering boosters is going to look absolutely “Rube Goldbergish” once that new propulsion method (the one “just over the horizon”) makes SSTO commonplace.
I’m pretty sure you are being sarcastic, but not positive, so you can laugh at me if appropriate. A series of best available in 4 year scopes could have been doing good science a couple of decades ago. Best readily available in 1996 for launch in 1999 or 2000 at the latest. Another in 2004, 2008, 2012, etc. Each done within a presidential term with known hardware and within known budget availability. Andrew could do a lot more work with a functioning 1 or 2 meter scope than with a 6.5 meter scope under development.
No hindsight by Andrew involved. Probably obvious to him about 10 minutes after he heard of the JWST.
I was being sarcastic but it probably just depends on the subject. I personally see no rush to invest a hideous amount of national treasure to go to Mars. There’s nothing of any value there for people on Earth to justify a current attempt. Our chances of getting wiped out by an asteroid aren’t any better now than 50 – 100 years from now and the technology may actually permit a thriving civilization there. Right now we’d have to huddle like Boy Scouts under a big sealed tent and hunt for water in “life or death” mode. I do see his point but it is still 20/20 hindsight. Last time I actually saw that work was when Jimmy Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber because Stealth was going to make it obsolete. He wasn’t wrong but Reagan revived the program for political reasons and the B-2 became so expensive that we couldn’t afford to build a real fleet of them.
I think we agree that spending large amounts of national treasure should only happen in clear cut situations. To me, Mars will still be there when the transportation is affordable. Perhaps soon when Starship comes online, or perhaps later when something else works out better. I see the natural development that Andrew mentioned as using things that can be reliably predicted to work. I also see the point Duheagle is getting across that tech moves in fits and starts with forward being a sawtooth rather than a smooth climb.
America wasn’t settled with Viking long boats, nor did it have to wait on the QE. 2. It happened as soon as reasonably possible when technology, economics, and motivations coincide. I see Mars as similar.ASAP doesn’t mean bankrupting the country or waiting on warp drive.
I dont see any need to spend billions of billions going to Mars, when we cannot justify the billions spent now on human spaceflight. I CAN see trying to improve that condition but its hard for me to “see” the path that improvement takes place
Starwhatever it is called these days is the latest in “here comes a miracle” and when that miracle happens, ie the cost lower “WOW” watch out anything is possible…
but even the spaceX fans cannot seem to explain what that is
Dude, could not have said it better myself. So I won’t reply to his point. Yes, that’s pretty much just what I was saying.
Pretty sure there isn’t any such thing as a “natural pace” of technology development. The technology development history of WW2 certainly makes a pretty good case against your proposition. Absent SpaceX, to cite another relevant example, would we now have landable and reusable rocket boosters? Not if legacy aerospace was left to its “natural pace” of launcher technology development – i.e., asymptotically close to zero. Technology development isn’t a consistent amble, it’s a series of disruptive pell-mell dashes with “catching breath” pauses in between.
That said, it’s still possible to identify things that are riskiest and/or need the most TRL-raising – usually the same or very similar lists. In the case of JWST the main items were:
1) origami sunscreen
2) origami mirror
3) deep-cryo helium refrigeration system
All three of these would likely have benefited greatly from being prototyped and tested in sub-scale form before being asked to bear the weight of a full-size, integrated design. The origami elements could have been tested in Earth orbit, perhaps even near ISS in case things didn’t go exactly as planned and EVA’s to diagnose/assist could be called for. The deep-cryo “reefer” prototype probably wouldn’t have been usefully testable so close to the annoyingly warm Earth. Perhaps it would have been better sent into a high-eccentricity, high-apogee orbit that would provide an appropriate “hang time” at a long distance from both Earth and Moon to see if the efficiency of the unit could match requirements.
Even this alternative scenario of mine has considerable elements of 20/20 hindsight, ala Mr. Rawnsley, but it likely could still have been done well within what has turned out to be the actual schedule of JWST and well within its eventual actual budget as well, though it admittedly would have cost more than the original JWST estimate.
But the history shows that there was a natural evolution of payload fairing expansion to allow for monolithic mirrors to be flown earlier. Ariane 5 was already operating with 5m diameter payload bays before the 21st Cen. And Delta IV was going to start with a 4m and evolve to the 5m by the time the design was established again in the late 20th Cen. Proton was offering 6+m diameter fairings since day one of commercial launch offerings. There very much was a very natural evolution of fairing diameter size. Your argument sweeping from WW2 to Space X kinda ignores the reality of expanding payload fairings that occurred all during the Cold War and the 90’s. The second half of your argument is pretty much my point. That we should have been babystepping these subsystems on flights of less ambitious programs.
As you note, payload fairings of the currently available sizes were all on offer before the turn of the century. That makes my point. We got to a certain size class and then have stuck there for a quarter century. The ULA Atlas V payload user’s guide has had language in it for a long time that makes it plain the vehicle can actually support fairings of up to 7-meters diameter, but they would have been special orders and, no doubt, insanely expensive if the cost of everything else ULA makes is any indication. It became a chicken-and-egg problem no one was willing to spend the money to get past until recently. And the breakthrough was pushed by disruptive outsiders, not the usual suspects proceeding at their “natural pace” because said pace was a dead stop.
What I recommended anent JWST was not necessarily retreating from the challenge of a project that incorporated multiple significant prerequisite advances, just that said needed advances should have been accorded the respect they deserved and sub-scale prototyping made part of the project plan to retire risk in a responsible way, not that these efforts should have been parts of separate projects.
Again you’re ignoring history, in that those wider fairings did not pop into existence at at the same time, but came online as payloads (the market place … you know) demanded it. The point still stands much larger space telescopes with incremental upgrades were an option passed up in favor of a battleship Montana.
the Montana…wow thats nice. exactly and it is as obsolete as that ship
Other than being mostly constructed of welded steel, it’s hard to see any consequential kinship between the stillborn Montana-class BB’s and the SpaceX SHS. The Montanas were the last abortive gasp of a paradigm that was pretty much exhausted even before they were designed. SHS, on the other hand, is the initial realization of a completely new paradigm with a long life ahead of it.
If I was to look around for an actual analogue of the Montana-class BB in current aerospace, I’d say the 737 MAX is a much more reasonable candidate – an old idea finally pushed beyond its reasonable limits of expandability.
Not a good analogy at all. The Montanas were just stretched Iowas with a fourth turret. In space telescope terms, that would be roughly analogous to a Hubble 2.0 with, say a 3.5 meter mirror, not a JWST.
During the first few decades of space launch, “the market” was largely governments. Their requirements did, indeed, require steadily larger fairings – to a point. Once that point was reached, commercial designers just incorporated whatever origami was required to fit into what had become the default max diameter.
One significant market force favoring this was the desire by payload builders/owners to be able to launch on more than just a single type of launch vehicle so as to not be captives of any particular one.
There we stuck for a quarter-century until Blue came along with the 7-meter NG and SpaceX came along with the 9-meter SHS. The advent of two vehicles with larger payload diameter capabilities seems to have cracked the ice even in advance of either vehicle being available as payload builders/owners will now have a choice of suppliers of a larger form-factor.
The Turks are mulling over a really big GEO comsat. Harris Corp. is offering antennae scaled for sats that can fit inside a 7-meter fairing. NASA is working up notions for space telescopes with JWST-scale or larger mirrors but without the origami. There will be more such things coming at a growing pace as these two vehicles reach operational status over the next two years.
I would not, in fact, be at all surprised to see an announcement by Blue sometime in the next year or so of a hammerhead 9-meter fairing option for NG. Making 9-meters the “new normal” would induce even more payload builders/owners to take advantage of the new roominess.
Not a good analogy at all. The Montanas were just stretched Iowas with a fourth turret
not at all. the Montana class were slow battleships with limited to none ship to ship ability the Iowas were fast battleships really large battlecruisers
the notion of course is to continue an obsolete method of project deployment
The Turks are mulling over a really big GEO comsat. Harris Corp. is offering antennae scaled for sats that can fit inside a 7-meter fairing
Now I’d like to see some art for that. Ah..here
https://www.harris.com/site…
Sounds like the Energiya launched comsat-concepts:
reportedly, three platforms could replace 32 conventional geosynchronous satellites
http://www.astronautix.com/…
http://www.friends-partners…
Now, with Super-Heavy, I can see these missions looked at again:
https://www.nasa.gov/missio…
Wish-list missions for the Ares V range from a 150-meter-wide (492 ft) radio telescope dish
I can see both comsats, space based radar, and radio telescope folks all using this. Harris needs to push it.
Pretty sure there
any such thing as a “natural pace” of technology development.
Oh yes there is…and it has been the driving force behind the development of air transportation systems
Human spaceflight came way to early
The development of air transportation systems proceeded in pell-mell fashion during the half-century from the time of the Wright Bros. into the early 50’s. The subsequent 2/3rds of a century has been marked by much more modest advances, most of them in the areas of incremental improvements to efficiency and economics of operation.
no
with few exceptions the development of civilian air transportation systems proceeded “as the technology came to bear” with little ever effort to force it
air transportation systems are free market driven meaning that they have to make a profit or perish…and when a design couldnot do that…it perished.
the latest example of that is the Airbus380…it simply did not meet the market and even though it offered up some really nice technology AND gave a fairly impressive ride…it is going away
today the entire story of human space flight has been in is “forcing” technology on the backs of federal money…and when the federal money ends…so does the technology
things like Webb are “one of pushes” that have become more common place as the need to feed the space and science industrial complex have become more important then what the project actually does.
Government has “forced” technology development in airplanes mostly as a function of war…but when the war ended, unless and until that technology was cost effective…it never came into the civilian transportation system
I don’t disagree with most of that. It’s pretty much what I said – the rate of fundamental technology advancement has slowed markedly since the advent of swept-wing jet civil transports in the early 50’s.
That has even been true anent military applications. The biggest advance in military aerospace since the 60’s has been stealth, a technology that has absolutely no application in civil aviation as you correctly pointed out in a more general way.
Thank you, by the way, for identifying what is, in most ways, an even better aerospace analogy to the Montana-class BB’s than the 737 MAX – the Airbus A380. Like the Yamato-class and unlike the Montana-class, though, the A380 actually got built and operated for awhile.
the rate of fundamental technology advancement has slowed markedly
“
“since the advent of swept-wing jet civil transports in the early 50’s.
I dont agree with that at all…the rate of technology advancement in commercial airplanes has proceeded since 1970 at a near break neck pace. to a fan boy like you perhaps they all still look alike but to a company like the one I work for the world is a completely different place then even 1990
“The biggest advance in military aerospace since the 60’s has been
stealth, a technology that has absolutely no application in civil
aviation as you correctly pointed out in a more general way.
says the chickenhawk…
it has been in powerplants and electronics…sorry man F minus
“Thank you, by the way, for identifying what is, in most ways, an even
better aerospace analogy to the Montana-class BB’s than the 737 MAX –
the Airbus A380. Like the Yamato-class and unlike the Montana-class,
though, the A380 actually got built and operated for awhile.
the 737 series has flown for over 1/2 a century…it is a commercial and engineering success and has and does make Boeing gobs of money
you are clueless. go back to dreaming of Dear Moon in orbit when is it now?
You remind me of a kid on one of those coin-fed “airplane” rides that one used to see in front of supermarkets all the time before the tort lawyers came along and spoiled all the fun. Kids could pretend they were going real fast when they were really just going up and down.
Your sense of rapid technology change in civil airliners is illusory. Today’s models have incrementally nicer cabins, but fly at the same speeds as their half-century-and-more-old predecessors. The improvements to engines have mainly been anent fuel economy/range. The improvements to electronics have been “drafting” behind the computing and consumer electronics industries. The software development practices of legacy aerospace are best described as quaint.
My “chickenhawk”-ness has no bearing on whether I’m right or not about the lack of application of stealth technology to civil aviation. And I am right about that. So I suppose that’s why you did your usual thing and tossed in a non sequitur as a response.
It was precisely my point that the 737 has flown, in various versions, for over a half-century. The MAX was simply an attempt to push the basic airframe beyond its reasonable bounds. There was a time when Boeing didn’t fear clean-sheet-of-paper redesigns, but that was before the Charlie Foxtrot that was the Dreamliner program. Now the company has a galloping case of the yips. That explains why the only “development” program currently underway is the incrementalist 777-X.
Your nose has apparently gotten so used to the stink of death anent Boeing that you don’t even notice it anymore. I once worked with a guy who had had a slaughterhouse job one summer. “For the first wek, I couldn’t even eat lunch,” he said. “By the end of the second week, I was eating my lunch on the kill floor and it didn’t bother me a bit.”
says the one dimensional mind stuck on speed as a measure of technology
so in your world since an Atlas Centaur has sent a payload with far more speed 🙂 than any Falcon9 so far well there must be no technology advances.
” There was a time when Boeing didn’t fear clean-sheet-of-paper redesigns,”
and they dont now as the 787 illustrates (rhte the 777) the Max was developed because the customer(s) wanted it..
Your lack of knowledge is disturbing to me
as for the airplane rides in front of the store. in four hours I’ll take my shiny boeing to London and back …and you will do what ?
not only a chickenhawk but a clueless one 🙂
Boeing will be the first American commercial crew carrier to the space station. how is that for progress 🙂 while the software company tries not to blow something else up 🙂
Its technology aside, this is why Musk efforts with his big rocket should be viewed with a dose of skeptisim.
its unclear that if the price of access to space were lowered say by half…that there would be any massive “leap” to do more things there
Time will tell that tale, but early indications look pretty good to me.
thats not surprising in the least to me
Your personal lack of imagination is, thank goodness, a minority affliction.
oh I have a vivid one…I just never let it take over from reality (except in love making 🙂
Good news regarding JWST!
https://media1.giphy.com/me…
Finally