NASA’s Webb Space Telescope makes mid-course correction time-critical

in a 7:50pm EST, web The first mid-track correction burn seem. I continue 65 minutes It is now complete. This burning is one of the major milestones that is crucial to the time – the first was solar array deployment, which happened shortly after launch.

This burn sets Webb’s path towards second Lagrange point, known as L2. After launch, Webb needs to perform its own mid-course correction maneuvers to reach its orbit. That’s by design: Webb received a small, intentional burn from an Ariane-5 that launched it into space, because it couldn’t be corrected for overburden. If Webb got too much thrust, he wouldn’t be able to turn back toward Earth because that would expose the telescope’s optics and structure directly to the sun, overheating it and aborting the science mission before it could begin.

So we lower the correct speed in three stages, being careful not to introduce too much thrust – there will be three correction maneuvers in the middle of the lane in total.

After this copying, there are no time-critical milestones, so the order, location, timing and duration of deployments may change.

you can track Where Webb in the process and read about it Upcoming postings. NASA She has a detailed plan to deploy the Webb Space Telescope over about two weeks. The deployment process is not an automatic laissez-faire sequence; It is controlled by man. The team monitors Webb in real time and may pause nominal publishing at any time. This means that deployments may not occur exactly in the order or at the times originally planned.