"With this milestone, NASA declared the observatory complete and on track for launch as soon as the fall of 2026. "The team is ecstatic," said Jackie Townsend, the observatory's deputy project manager at Goddard, in a recent interview with Ars. "It has been a long road, but filled with lots of successes and an ordinary amount of challenges, I would say. It's just so rewarding to get to this spot.""
"Webb is the largest telescope ever put into space. After launch, Webb had to perform a sequence of more than 50 major deployment steps, with 178 release mechanisms that had to work perfectly. Any one of the more than 300 single points of failure could have doomed the mission. In the end, Webb unfolded its giant segmented mirror and delicate sunshield without issue."
Technicians completed final assembly of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope inside a cavernous clean room in Maryland. The observatory underwent vibration and acoustic testing to survive rocket launch and thermal vacuum testing to endure airless conditions and extreme temperature swings. On November 25, teams at NASA Goddard joined the inner and outer portions, and the observatory was declared complete and on track for launch in fall 2026. The team reports strong morale after a lengthy development process with many successes and an ordinary level of challenges. The recap of the James Webb Space Telescope illustrates the complexity and risk of flagship missions.
#nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope #spacecraft-testing #goddard-space-flight-center #james-webb-space-telescope
Read at Ars Technica
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