Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

James Webb Space Telescope unfolds its tennis-court-sized sunshield

By
To help ensure success, technicians carefully inspect the James Webb Space Telescope’s sunshield before deployment testing begins, while it is occurring, and perform a full post-test analysis to ensure the observatory is operating as planned.
To help ensure success, technicians carefully inspect the James Webb Space Telescope’s sunshield before deployment testing begins, while it is occurring, and perform a full post-test analysis to ensure the observatory is operating as planned. NASA/Chris Gunn

Progress on the testing of NASA’s next-generation telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, is back underway after delays this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Recently, the James Webb unfolded its massive sunshield in a series of tensioning tests which prepare the telescope for launch next year.

The latest test involved the telescope deploying its tennis-court-sized sunshield which will protect the delicate electronics of the telescope from the heat of the sun. “This is one of Webb’s biggest accomplishments in 2020,” said Alphonso Stewart, Webb deployment systems lead, in a statement. “We were able to precisely synchronize the unfolding motion in a very slow and controlled fashion and maintain its critical kite-like shape, signifying it is ready to perform these actions in space.”

Recommended Videos

The testing involved running the hardware through its paces, including the 139 actuators, eight motors, and thousands of other components that control the complex unfurling process. The testing is further complicated by the fact that in space, the unfurling will happen without gravity, but here on Earth, the gravity can cause friction issues.

Related

The telescope, which will be a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and which will search for habitable worlds among other scientific objectives, has been hit with a series of delays, including work on the project being suspended due to the coronavirus. But work is back underway now, with the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland performing tests on the hardware to ensure everything is ready for launch.

The team is hopeful that the launch of the telescope can go ahead in 2021. “This milestone signals that Webb is well on its way to being ready for launch. Our engineers and technicians achieved incredible testing progress this month, reducing significant risk to the project by completing these milestones for launch next year,” Bill Ochs, project manager for Webb, said in the statement. “The team is now preparing for final post-environmental deployment testing on the observatory these next couple of months prior to shipping to the launch site next summer.”

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
One galaxy, two views: see a comparison of images from Hubble and Webb
The peculiar galaxy NGC 3256 takes centre stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This distorted galaxy is the wreckage of a head-on collision between two spiral galaxies which likely occurred 500 million years ago, and it is studded with clumps of young stars which were formed as gas and dust from the two galaxies collided.

It might not seem obvious why astronomers need multiple different powerful space telescopes. Surely a more powerful telescope is better than a less powerful one? So why are there multiple different telescopes in orbit, either around Earth or around the sun?

The answer is to do with two main factors. One is the telescope's field of view, meaning how much of the sky it looks at. Some telescopes are useful for looking at large areas of the sky in less detail, working as survey telescopes to identify objects for further research or to look at the universe on a large scale -- like the recently launched Euclid mission. While others, like the Hubble Space Telescope, look at small areas of the sky in great detail, which is useful for studying particular objects.

Read more
James Webb spots the most distant active supermassive black hole ever discovered
Crop of Webb's CEERS Survey image.

As well as observing specific objects like distant galaxies and planets here in our solar system, the James Webb Space Telescope is also being used to perform wide-scale surveys of parts of the sky. These surveys observe large chunks of the sky to identify important targets like very distant, very early galaxies, as well as observe intriguing objects like black holes. And one such survey has recently identified the most distant active supermassive black hole seen so far.

While a typical black hole might have a mass up to around 10 times that of the sun, supermassive black holes are much more massive, with a mass that can be millions or even billions of times the mass of the sun. These monsters are found at the heart of galaxies and are thought to play important roles in the formation and merging of galaxies.

Read more
Saturn as you’ve never seen it before, captured by Webb telescope
Saturn captured by the James Webb Space Telescope

NASA has shared a gorgeous image of Saturn captured recently by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Webb’s first near-infrared observations of the second largest planet in our solar system also show several of Saturn’s moons: Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys.

Read more