And liftoff! Liftoff from a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself. James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe ...
happy new year everybody i hope you enjoyed the launch of the james webb space telescope on
christmas day of all days as much as i did i still can't quite believe that we're like finally here
to be honest like it's been a long time coming so i just wanted to take um a few minutes to just
update everybody on you know where the mission is up to what's going on now like what's next after
the launch and there's three things that i wanted to to pick out and mention specifically the first
one is that the estimated lifetime for the jameson space telescope for science is a lot longer than
we thought which is possibly the best news you could have ever received right so if you watch
the launch on christmas day or you watch my live reaction to it midway through cooking a turkey
you will have heard the word nominal a lot from the mission controllers and i got very excited
about the word nominal and the reason why is because the better the launch went the less
fuel that they had to use up you know for example if the trajectory of the rocket or the craft once
it was released you know wasn't quite on course they would have had to burn a little bit of fuel
to bring it back on course a course correction or for example if the rocket was rolling or
processing or something like that they would have had to do a course correction but the launch
went phenomenally well i mean you could see like the trajectory of the rocket as it was going up
lined up perfectly with where we wanted it to be there was barely any corrections that needed to be
made which means less fuel was used up which means more fuel for the future when it's actually doing
science operations which means it can do science for longer so they did have to do two minor course
corrections one on the 25th of december and one on the 27th but after those have been done nasa and
isa could then basically sit down run the numbers analyze how much fuel do we actually have left
bear in mind we still have to actually get the spacecraft to l2 where it will actually orbit
the sun and actually do its science operations from but how much fuel do we have left and how
much time does that mean that we can run for and then in early january they actually announced and
i quote that james webb will have significantly more than a 10 year science lifetime this is such
a huge deal for those of us in the astrophysics like research community right because
and we were told that you know in the worst case scenario well not the worst case scenario the
worst case scenario would be we'd have like no telescope but like the best worst case scenario
was that james webb would go for five years right and we get five years worth of science
observations from it in the best case maybe we get 10 years but the fact that the launch on
east's ariane 5 rocket was so precise there was so few corrections needed we're now looking at this
longer than 10 years figure and the reason that it is so woolly it's you know it's more than 10 years
is that you can't quite put an exact number on it because there's gonna be a lot of factors that do
affect that eventual lifetime like in the long run in the long term right but the fact
they used the phrase significantly more than 10 years suggesting me we could be looking at like
15 years worth of science operations with the james webb space telescope which would be
i mean amazing right it would mean more data for more people more science would get done
and we would learn even more the second thing i want to mention that was a huge milestone was
that one of the detectors so the instrument on board that is actually going to you know record
the light that the telescope collects has been successfully switched on in space right the first
of four instruments to do so so if you remember from my video on the jameson space telescope it
has four instruments in total and i actually spoke to sarah kendrew who worked on development of miri
at issa in baltimore so after speaking to sarah for that video it was even more special to hear
that miri had you know not only switched on in space but also seemed to be functioning okay as
well and that is just the first in many many many steps that the miri team will take to make sure
that everything is functioning okay and working that's what they call the commissioning phase for
all these instruments as well but it's definitely the first step and so it was a very exciting piece
of news and last but not least as of yesterday 11 days past the launch we now officially actually
have a telescope in space you know many of you are probably confused by that because it's been in
space for 12 days now so what do i actually mean well the jameson space telescope is essentially a
double-decker bus parked on a tennis court right just to give you an idea of the scale of this
thing it didn't fit in a little skinny rocket you know that's designed to be nice and streamlined
to get it up off the ground so it had to be folded up in order to fit and it is now unfolding
in space this was always the most nail-biting bit there are 344 single-point failures in this entire
unfolding process if any of those went wrong that's it for the whole mission we have nothing
now for an excruciating seven days over new year right from like late december to early january
they were unfolding this huge tennis court sized sun shield designed to block infrared radiation
from the sun heat from the sun essentially and they were unfolding it and tensioning in it right
like pulling it taut now that had to be done very slowly so there was no rips or tears in the sun
shield and in five individual layers results they had to do this five times this is why it
was so nerve-wracking that is thankfully now all complete and it looks to be working okay because
the detectors on board have recorded a temperature difference between the sun side and the opposite
side where the telescope will actually be operating on the sun's side it's still 50 degrees
celsius whereas on the shielded side where the telescope will be it's minus 200 degrees celsius
which is great news that's what we want the kind of temperatures that we need so it looks like the
telescope is actually going to be able to operate as intended after that the secondary mirror
fold-out began right essentially a huge tripod that's about 8 meters or 25 foot long essentially
the length of a big bus right and it's got a 75 centimeter wide mirror attached to the end of it
that had to unfold into exactly the right position that all seems to have gone swimmingly as well
nasa announced it last night it was possibly the best news you could get on a random dark wednesday
evening in january and now that's folded out we actually have something that's going to behave
like an actual telescope it is a telescope now that's folded out right light can actually come in
bounce off what we call the primary mirror that's you know the first point of contact the light has
with the telescope bounds to the secondary mirror and then get focused down to the detectors in the
middle of the telescope i mean before that unfold happen we essentially just had a bunch of really
expensive high-tech kit floating around space but no telescope so with the announcement that
that gone okay you know there was a huge sigh of relief from the entirety of the astrophysics
and astronomy community because we are now past more than 75 of those single point failures and
we don't have to worry about them anymore having said that there are still a few steps to go yet
including folding out those are you know iconic primary mirror hexagonal segments right that were
tucked away during launch and then also adjusting them so the focus the secondary is correct as well
all that fold out should be done by the end of this week right like by sunday the 9th of january
we should know if everything is okay and then my heart rate can presumably finally slow down
if you want to follow all this nasa has a great website where you can see the timeline of the
mission know what distance it's at from earth and from l2 and what stages are left to go in the fold
out i'll link it down below for you plus there's usually a live stream for all these different
stages of foldout you know all the different milestones as well you can see what's going on in
mission control room and they're usually on nasa's youtube channel i've actually got notifications on
the nasa web twitter account so i don't miss them when they're happening i will have another update
on jwst for you in two weeks time on my night sky news episode for january so keep an eye out
for that because by then we're going to know you know how this mirror segment adjustment has gone
and if everything's okay and it will be very very close to its final orbital position of l2 where
it'll actually be doing all of its observations from and then i want to be one step closer to
first light with the jameson space telescope so if you remember from my telescope or my telescope
my video why is my party being weird is this because i want my hat outside to go get lunch
plus there's usually live streams as well for
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