NASA got a huge Christmas gift this morning when it successfully launched its most powerful space
telescope ever eric sorenson explains how it could revolutionize astronomy and help
us better understand the birth of the universe at 7 20 a.m eastern time on christmas morning 2021
the rockets fired and the ground shook spectators at guyana space center in kuru french guyana and
the world over held their breath as the wildly ambitious james webb space telescope was launched
if all goes well the culmination of decades of work and 10 billion dollars in investment
will give humanity a much clearer picture of the origins of the universe and our place in it there
are numerous milestones since our earliest ancestors looked skyward and wondered about
the stars from the most primitive telescopes to sputnik 1 from yuri gagarin to neil armstrong
certain days and events mark giant leaps in our progression with any luck at all in
the coming months and years christmas morning 2021 will be right up there with these giant
leaps welcome to fact nominal in today's video we time travel through nearly three
decades of challenges and determination to see webb finally get off the ground and become the
virtual time machine the scientific world has dreamed of for centuries
many justifiably worried that this day would never come nearly anything that could conceivably happen
too slow or completely derail web happened funding woes check missed engineering targets
check project management issues check loose screws check and for good measure
throw in a global pandemic so while any project of such incredible ambition is bound to bump
into the unforeseen webb encountered an array of obstacles that borders on unbelievable the
james webb telescope is unlike any observatory humanity has sent into space or will for quite
a while size alone makes that distinction as the gold-plated multi-segmented mirror has a 6.5 meter
21.3 feet diameter almost twice the size of the european space agency's herschel telescope
and four times the light gathering capability it's the first to orbit beyond the moon nearly
1.5 million kilometers or 1 million miles away at what is called the second lagrange point or l2
there the earth and the sun's gravity cancel out meaning webb can orbit the sun with earth
at its back from its extremely sensitive array of unique instruments to the multi-layer sun
shield that will make the shaded side 600 degrees fahrenheit cooler than the sun lit side webb is
loaded with scientific first that required years of development and testing oh and did we mention
it had to be launched tucked away inside a rocket before unfolding and calibrating itself in space
with virtually zero chance of human intervention due to its positioning far beyond the moon's orbit
the mirror and the sun shield are folded like space origami to fit into the rocket fairing so
what went up christmas morning looks nothing like what will hopefully spend five years unraveling
mysteries of our universe and the original launch was planned for 2007 only 14 years ago
let's dig into the long trek to reach this historic point first just throw out the 2007 plan
that was wildly ambitious and never a realistic outcome so nasa project management targeted 2014
by 2010 it was clear to all that 2014 was not feasible either mainly due to a severe lack of
near-term resources available for the project an internal critical design review and an external
independent comprehensive review panel reached that same conclusion webb survived a cancellation
attempt in 2011 that if successful would have pushed any similar nasa projects decades down
the road the u.s house appropriations committee proposed the project's termination as part of a
larger effort to enact belt tightening measures at nasa and other federal science agencies this
effort thankfully failed the initial estimate for webb was 5.1 billion dollars and 3.5 billion of
that was already spent by the time of the reviews the late 2015 launch was possible but only if an
extra 250 million was available in both 2011 and 2012 and the new project cost was 6.5 billion
dollars those funds of course never materialized and many project workers were laid off
this lost the brainpower and experience of those who had worked on web thus far and in turn delayed
development of components the extra time now obviously needed added at least 1.5 billion
dollars to the cost and while the gold-plated mirrors were completed and testing progressed
well on many components other issues surfaced that caused even longer delays during vibration
testing to simulate launch conditions screws loosened up and fell out this of course needed
immediate attention leaky valves were detected during further tests and a simulation to unfurl
the five-layer sun shield resulted in tearing the spacecraft element but still these hurdles were
overcome and all four advanced instruments for gathering data were tested and re-tested in 2015
a launch date in october 2018 was targeted but issues discovered during integration and testing
along with some human errors stalled the launch yet again an incorrect solvent was used to clean
a fuel valve and someone applied the wrong voltage during a test the estimated cost now reached 9.7
billion dollars and the new launch target became march 2021 at this point it's important to state
that in the early stages nasa and its contractors did not have realistic knowledge and estimates of
what they were building also the project then known as the next generation space telescope
was founded on what nasa's inspector general identified as a culture of optimism nasa aims high
literally and otherwise an optimism is a driving component to do the things it sets out to do
but that optimism leads to cost and time estimates that quickly become unrealistic due to the very
nature of nasa's mission many key technologies for jwst did not even exist in the project's
early days nasa engineers literally had to invent several new technologies before construction of
the groundbreaking telescope could commence for perspective the hubble space telescope had an
initial price tag of 200 million dollars far lower than the eventual 1.2 billion dollars that it cost
to develop in june 2020 nasa announced that webb quote absolutely will not launch in march
2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic necessitating switching to teleworking for many project members
in quote march 2021 obviously did not become the launch date for webb in november nasa reported
a sudden unplanned release of a clamp band that happened as technicians prepared to attach webb
to the launch vehicle adapter this caused a vibration through the telescope which of
course had to be tested to ensure nothing was damaged december saw no less than three delays
including a faulty cable that bumped the launch to christmas eve and then christmas morning due
to weather but now finally webb is in space and headed to l2 mission accomplished not exactly
to be crystal clear every single person involved in the james webb space telescope project
has a nerve racking six months ahead the first month on the way to l2 has been called
by nasa 29 days on the edge for all the carefully choreographed deployments that must be successful
for jwst to work so this historic launch is really the beginning months on end of practice
now must translate to the real thing engineers will initiate and monitor over 300 unique steps
involving 178 mechanisms and 50 major deployments redundant systems and backup plans are built in
because every one of those mechanisms must work for jwst to function the first 24 hours involve
automatic deployments culminating with web's high gain antenna positioning itself to point back to
earth after three days in space jwst will begin deploying its five-layer tennis court size sun
shield and on day four webb's mirrors are raised two meters to have room to deploy fully and cool
properly by day eight the tensioning process for each sun shield layer should be complete
day 10 is crucial the secondary mirror swings to its operational position in front of the primary
mirror and any component failure could mean no images to earth the primary mirror begins the
unfolding process on day 12 and for two days the wings will fold out and lock into place
full deployment of the 21 foot diameter mirror is another giant step for webb's
mission to be successful this is followed by 10 days of crucial adjustments of each
gold-plated primary mirror segment all 18 of them and the secondary mirror
then on day 29 the third and last course correction burn puts webb into orbit at l2
extremely critical now what are we ready to peer into the depths of the universe not even close
the party awaiting mission engineers and scientists once the james webb space telescope
reaches l2 is extremely painstaking it's three months of careful alignment of the 13 hexagonal
mirrors this very delicate process brings all 18 separate images into one phenomenally clear
picture it will be four months from launch before the telescope is fully aligned and all instruments
focused and for them to work properly the temperature must drop to minus 233 degrees celsius
that's -388 degrees fahrenheit at this temperature infrared background noise is suppressed
so are we there yet nope each of the four instruments on board the mid-infrared instrument
the near-infrared camera the near-infrared imager and slitless spectrograph fine guidance sensor
and the near-infrared spectrograph must be calibrated and tested in each of its many
operational models this sequence lasts over two months and then by late june if every single thing
works properly or perhaps later in the summer if it doesn't we will begin our unprecedented
search into the farthest reaches of space and time and peer into the beginning of our universe
it's been an incredibly long wait with footfalls and obstacles never imagined
in its embryonic stages but the James Webb space telescope will surely increase our
understanding of the universe and our place in it in ways we cannot imagine
so what do you think about this epic effort by science and engineering to explore everything from
the origins of the universe itself to our cosmic neighborhood will you be on the edge of your seat
for the next six months tell us in the comments and as always thank you for watching Factnomenal