James Webb Telescope faces problems in solar protection

The scope of the new James Webb telescope has been straight from the picture book since it was launched at Christmas, but now there were early issues. Due to sensor failure, the solar protection for the telescope could not be extended as planned.

Suggests that NASA In their report on the progress of the work. Extending sun protection is an important area – and one that is particularly tricky. For safety, different foils should be stretched in five layers and something can easily go wrong. As NASA sought to extend solar protection on New Year’s Day, several sensors that were supposed to monitor the solar protection installation failed.

Growth is delayed

Shortly afterwards, a successful expansion of the second web solar system was announced. According to NASA, this is another important milestone. “Webb’s solar shield now resembles its full, kite-shaped shape in space,” NASA said. It took longer than expected to come out today, but the surgical team acted cautiously after the initial difficulties and stuck to the protocols they had developed to deal with unforeseen circumstances.

The two middle cantilever arms are now locked in their final position. When the team goes to the final stage of installing sun protection, you will have the sun protection membranes in place: tensioning the membranes. In the coming days, the team will split each of the five layers of sunscreen individually and bring them into their final, tight shape. This creates a gap between the membranes so that the heat spreads outwards and each layer of the solar shield is cooler than the one below.

See also:

NASA, Start, Orbit, James Web Telescope, James Web Space Telescope, JWST
NASA