James Webb Space Telescope: Sunshield Deployment - Mission Control Live

[Music] nasa's james webb space telescope launched just eight days ago right now we are streaming the final stages of the sunshield unfolding from the mission control room in baltimore maryland this is live coverage of a real-time space flight operation as controllers prepare the james webb space telescope for work on the morning of december 25th a massive rocket called an ariane 5 lifted off from a state-of-the-art facility located in french guiana on board the james webb space telescope bound for a point in space a million miles away the process of preparing web for actual operations is called commissioning and the majority of that work is taking place here at the space telescope science institute in baltimore what you're looking at now is some incredible footage actually live taken live from the uh the james webb space telescope during launch and here we now see uh the mission operations center in baltimore it works and the better status between so i'm your host michelle thawler today and um this is really a momentous and historic event that you're looking at uh we are actually going to be with you live as we finish the major unfolding of the james webb space telescope sunshield this is something that has never been done in space before this is a technology that's never been used in space before i am really really excited to uh to be here and i want to give you a little bit of a sense of what's going on here a lot of things have been changing very rapidly we have a beautiful set at goddard space flight center uh where we are going to give you a very well rehearsed live broadcast because of the resurgence of covid we are no longer operating on that set and so those of us who can be at home are at home for the protection and the health of our colleagues and the people that absolutely need to be at the mission operations center in baltimore are there that means that i'm doing this from my home and that you're looking at something that is also unrehearsed this is a live event that we haven't really had a chance to uh to put together in a very polished way so as we do this you know we're all in this together i ask for your patience if things are a little rough around the edges of this broadcast that's the reason why uh we also received a foot of snow yesterday here in maryland where i live so i'm having sporadic power outages hopefully we won't be worrying about that but the the reason we've decided to do this live is that this is something that everybody around the world is is with us on the james webb space telescope is a true milestone for humanity and it is a really historic momentous day and we want you with us on this day so later in the broadcast we'll be taking questions from social media but to begin with i want to begin discussions with somebody that's been with the web mission for quite a long time and uh this is uh keith parrish uh keith parish let's see your uh your title now is the uh uh the the the the the spacecraft deployment engineer is that correct no no i'm the commissioning manager for for web commissioning manager thank you thank you very much the commissioning manager yeah that's right good morning good morning how are things in baltimore uh well we're great right now i'm just uh i'm up i'm upstairs from that operation center that you see there so i'm one floor up from uh from the operations engineers right now right well let's start about you know the people that are joining us perhaps some of the people that didn't see the actual live broadcast of the launch that we did um let's talk about what's happened in the eight days since the launch so so what's happened and what's going on right now yeah so we had an absolutely beautiful launch on christmas morning i think it was the best christmas gift under the tree for a lot of people including our operations team and all the folks that have been working on this for so many years you know right off the bat we got a beautiful launch from arion put us right where we wanted to be as far as our velocity uh that evening on christmas evening we actually did our first mid-course correction burn and that was uh executed flawlessly we actually used uh the almost the minimal amount of fuel that we needed to do that so uh and that that burn didn't happen by accident that was years in planning so just you know big shout out to our flight dynamics team and our delta v team and our propulsion and all of our teams so they they pulled that off flawlessly at exactly 12 and a half hours after launch uh then the next day we did some more uh turn-on of activities we got our antenna deployed uh eventually we got into uh getting our uh another burn a couple days later we did a small mid-course correction and then the next day we actually started doing our deployment so we deployed our forward uh and aft ups shells uh we deployed that big uh tower that gets the telescope up away from uh from the spacecraft uh and then i got the and then it just then it started then the pace started really really picking up and i had to it's been such a blur i had to write down just to make sure i didn't forget it all uh on about five days in we actually did our roll-up covers and those roll-up covers come in three stages uh we release a bunch of pins that hold those covers to the shell uh we released those they rolled up into two out of the three stages and we held them there and then uh on new year's eve uh we did what what i would think is our most exciting deployment and that's where we actually deployed our plus and minus booms our j2 booms you see some footage here of the real thing uh when we tested this on the ground for the last time so uh everything you're seeing in that footage uh is uh what we're doing right now but those plus and minus j2 booms came out on new year's eve uh we had we had a great new year's eve here in the in the in the mission operations center and the big thing about those booms coming out is that's when we plunged our telescope in the darkness uh for the first time our telescope is has no more sun on it and uh it's been cooling as it should ever since uh and then over the last couple days we took a little bit of a break over the weekend as you've heard uh in in the news there which was much needed for our team because they were going uh like gangbusters for that week uh and then and then yesterday morning we started what we're doing right now which is actually pulling in uh the corners and actually tensioning up the five layers of the sun shield so it's been an absolutely you know just a whirlwind and a fantastic week since since we've launched that's incredible you know it's so many congratulations and i know that uh one of the things that's been sort of popular on the internet is uh we have a website actually where you can track where web is now can you give us a little bit of updates so where exactly is web now i haven't checked that today the last time i saw it it was roughly about 500 maybe 600 000 miles uh from from earth uh we're on our way to l2 uh one thing you'll notice on that website that i think we get a lot of questions on is it looks like we're slowing down and uh that's exactly right we should be slowing down so uh we want to go out and sort of be uh we want to be pretty much absolutely stopped when we get to that roughly million miles away and that's when we'll sort of be in our orbit around l2 so our our velocity with respect to the earth is is actually is actually coming down you also see some temperatures on that page uh that kind of gives a little bit of a feel we have thousands of temperature monitors all around web we we try to pick some that give you a little bit of a flavor of what's happening on the hot side and what's happening on the cold side and so far everything is performing as as it should from a temperatures perspective i think some other things you'll see on our website is where we are in our deployments uh and you should be able to track that all on our website so you know huge shout out to our our our media team that does those websites and does everything you're doing today because uh we're we're a fast moving thing and you guys are keeping up with us so it's uh you know kudos to you guys yeah we were talking about some of the challenges with this yeah the resurgence of covent has created what's going on at the mock and with your team to to make sure people are are safe you know what to tell tell me a bit about how you're dealing with the challenges right now yeah so um you know like the rest of the rest of our nation right now we're we're dealing with the surge right right when we're doing all this so uh uh we've known this uh we've been in our rehearsal stage for a couple years now since the reality of covet hit the entire world so we've started planning for dealing with kova bent you know a couple years back and so we were ready for it we weren't quite anticipating a surge like we just got uh on right on top of our first week of of the of the mission uh but uh we have protocols in place to keep everybody safe uh we do testing uh we try to keep our numbers down we do what we can uh practically and then uh you know we do have cases uh and and and our our team handles that and and and we keep those they keep those folks uh isolated one of the one of the things that has been a challenge is people who you know worked a long time on this and and they and and we had to isolate them now fortunately in this day and age we can uh get them hooked up to our operations loop and they can uh help us remotely from wherever they are so uh um we are handling it very well uh but uh it has been it has you know it's just another challenge that uh we just roll with it we just roll with it well let's talk a bit about what's going on today because as we mentioned there's something something quite significant happening so so take us through you know what's going to happen in the next say hour or so and and really what that means what the significance of that is yeah so yesterday so we you know we put out all these five layers of the sun shield and they're just kind of you know they're not really tight they're kind of and then actually what we've been doing since yesterday is our sun shield team uh again right downstairs right now uh they're actually reeling in uh cables from each of the six pull points around the periphery of the sun shield so each one of those corners actually has three cables uh related to it one cable actually pulls it really really tight and then two cables on that corner actually are lightly pulled and they're connected to the periphery all around the perimeter of the sun shield and that's what gives us a very very precise control over the shape of the edge uh in addition to spreading the layers we want to make sure that the the layers are actually positioned correctly around the edge so huge amount of engineering went into controlling those edges so again each layer has each corner has three cables and again we have six corners so you can start doing the math on those and all over we have 90 different cables that have been reeled in over the last day as we as we tension layer one we're reeling in 90 cables as we as we tension layer 2 we're down to 72 cables and today we're really only working with 18 cables so we've gone from 90 cables and today we're working with uh you know 36 cables for layer 4 right now when we start layer 5 in a little bit we'll be down to 18 cables and we have motors uh that actually reel all those cables in very precise uh you know very very well uh slowly done uh those those motors turn and then uh eventually uh we'll turn all those motors off and we'll be we'll be fully tensioned uh when we get into layer five here in a little bit you'll notice that we uh we actually go around the corners we tension each corner up separately so that's what's going on today and uh we'll finish up here shortly that's absolutely wonderful so uh you know just to kind of talk a bit about this heat shield uh give us a sense about how large this heat shield is and and what are the temperature differentials how cold is it on the cold side versus the warm side yeah so we you know we always throw around the tennis court analogy i guess if you play tennis you know exactly what we're talking about if you don't play tennis you're probably like well i think that's big i don't know uh roughly you know i'm gonna i'm gonna use feet here i know i know um but it's roughly 70 feet uh 70 feet long and uh and about 54 feet wide so you can see some dimensions there uh thank you for for providing that in the meters so uh yeah very very large it's one of the largest structures uh that that has flown that has been sort of robotically or automatically uh deployed so uh yeah quite large again all the edge control all the uh edge separation and again we're doing five of these we're not just doing one uh so you know again a huge shout out to our sunshield team uh they've been at this for many many years and and you cannot overstate what an engineering accomplishment this is the thing that's so exciting about so many aspects of the web oh i see here we've got a graphic about this oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah this is dramatic again we try to put this out on our website uh but roughly we we get about again in fahrenheit uh we get about 100 degree fahrenheit drop per layer uh overall we get about you know 600 degrees between the hot side and what i call our coldest temperature on the observatory which is our instrument detectors uh our instrument detectors are running right around minus 400 degrees so you could boil water probably on the front side of us uh and and and and on the back side of us you're you're almost down to absolute zero so the you know the the huge size of this uh has to do with the just the general size of this observatory you know in total and of course this idea that it had to actually be folded up to actually launch inside the area and five rocket and i just want to take you back a little bit through that launch you know i know that this was something that was an incredible day for all of us uh i'm sorry i'm getting a perhaps getting yes absolutely i'm just getting instructions that we have a wonderful chance to talk with you another person that's had uh you know truly a historic day jim flynn from northrop grumman and so so um jim please introduce yourself to us and tell us a bit about how you're doing today uh yeah i'm jim i'm the uh original essential manager at northrop grumman working with in partnership with the with the nasa team i've been involved in the sunshield all the way from the original development concept development through the design all the build and tests uh and through this final great phase of deployments on orbit so let's talk a bit about the sunshield in details i mean for one thing i mean what an incredible story for you that you've been working on this for so long tell us a bit about what the sun shield is is made of and and can i i also you know let's start with the technical i'd also like to end you know ask you some personal questions about some of the challenges you faced some of the things you had to overcome but let's describe this sun shield so to begin with what is it made of so um the the layers are made out of a capped on e was made by dupont uh coated to get the correct optical properties for thermal performance um the bottom layer is is two millisticks that's .002 inches thick and the other four layers are one one mil thick very very thin material but very very strong when you you're pulling on it so it's very very robust uh you know in terms of the handling and the deployment you have to be careful not to you know tear it or puncture it but it's a very robust material um so basically uh you know we if we make big long rolls of this material and then at our vendor that made the membranes for us at nexhall in huntsville there's a very detailed process where we design build scene the gores together and build the assembly that goes along with the big deployable structure system that you see here one of the things that i found really fascinating was how many of these actuators these these non-explosive actuators have to have to work to get this thing to unfold could you describe a bit you know what what these actuators are and what has to happen so um the majority of the actuators are really holding this the folded essential down to the structure we need to make sure that it's in a nice repeatable fashion from all the ground testing keeping it all you know in a controlled fashion and then releasing it very sequentially so that we have a very controlled deployment these actuators basically hold that down and electrically actuate and release the system you know in a very controlled fashion that we test on the ground and we've we've shown multiple times is successful one of the questions i had of course is that when you're testing on the ground you have to deal with the effect of gravity during your test and you know now where web is you know up up you know in space on its way to l2 it's different i mean how how do you simulate that in your tests you know the the lack of gravity yeah so we had to kind of break the test program into pieces and at the big assembly level you really just can't do that so we made some system articles we would hang them almost in a shower curtain fashion to play them out offloaded like you would see in zero gravity so it's really a building up of a lot of different test articles in different orientations to show how it would perform in a zero g environment so you have to do it kind of in pieces rather than all at once with the final build and what were some of the the major engineering challenges i mean can you you know over your many years working on the sun shield you know what were some of the stories of okay at first we didn't know how to do this and and then we figured it out but what were some of the big things that stand out in your memory yeah i mean the you know originally it's just it's you know we had an idea what this needed to look like you know in its deployed state but it was really how do we take these five very thin membranes fold them up and get them to fit within the payload fairing of the the launch vehicle and then be able to deploy it on orbit very reliably and uh you know with a lot of confidence so i think that's probably you know in the big picture just the ability to take these you know five thin layers fold them up and then make sure that we know how we're going to deploy them to get to that final shape that's probably the biggest challenge that we had you know in the development of this subsystem i know that you know whenever we've been uh talking about you they've been saying you know you've got to get jim on this because he's the one that they they feel was sort of the lead on this i mean the person that has been on that so long how long how long have you been on this project when did you start working on web uh it seems like uh my whole life now i think uh probably like uh you know maybe 15 16 years from beginning to end so uh yeah so since the very beginning since we were trying to figure out what the concepts were building maturing and iterating along the way and slowly improving the product and reducing the complexity and then getting a very reliable uh system at the very at the end keith is there anything you'd like to add to the story i think you've been working with jim for quite a while i mean obviously jim is understating the challenges because he has overcome many along the way so uh you know the only thing i would say that uh people may not appreciate is uh the rocket launch itself uh and and and just getting the air out of all these layers so i you know i'm sure jim would like to to add a little bit of detail there on how that that was probably one of the biggest challenges yeah when you take the the five layers and then you have to fold them and fold them again you know you have to be careful about how that air is trapped in between the layers and how you can get it out in a controlled fashion and that was definitely one of the biggest challenges understanding what that environment was in the rocket how quickly the air needs to evacuate the loads from basically this this billowing inside the fairing we ran a lot of tests we we built uh full-scale mock-ups in uh in chambers that depressurized really quickly to verify the concepts we had to um you know design the system basically so that it was controlled through that depressurization environment and iterate you know several times in terms of making sure that that was a robust solution so it's definitely one of the challenges not just having it folded up and repeatably getting it on orbit but but being able to vent that air that was trapped in between the layers in a controlled reliable fashion so that the system basically could withstand those depressurization loads and deploy on orbit yeah what we're looking at here the the image that they have for us it was that spectacular uh you know real image of the observatory pulling away from the rocket and uh this was one of these things that i could hardly believe was was real when it was happening it was an absolutely gorgeous shot and uh oh sorry i'm just hearing an instruction from the mock i was wondering if that was right yes yes so they finished the layer four forward the tensioning they'll move on to the aft and layer four is almost complete we'll be complete after the next major move just just amazing um one of the questions we've been getting from social media is that you know we we had that image of the observatory pulling away at 622.01 ready to go to do you operate for intent the command line looks good you're good to execute escape okay so i guess i've heard i've heard that jim needs to go to the console that uh that that where we're coming up on the very end of this so jim thank you so much for for joining us and uh uh congratulations on everything and best of luck for the rest of today yeah i just wanted to say just wanted to congratulate the entire team it's just been a hugely talented team from beginning to end on the north nasa side you know a lot of you know brilliant people working a lot of hours and really a lot of dedication to get us here to this point and there's a lot of people out there that really deserve a lot of credit hey i can confirm kudos for the success that we're seeing here today well thank you so much for joining us all right thank you at 622.019 we are ready to um execute that clock looks good you're going to execute yeah so keith can you give us an idea we're hearing these instructions coming over right now what's what's happening at this very moment yeah so what you're here you're hearing you're hearing the voice of our dev ops lead uh nancy um and uh she's awesome and she is coordinating between our flight operations team which is actually sending commands up to the spacecraft and uh she's sort of the liaison between that group of folks and actually our deployment engineers and i see you are going to move the act and what she did there she just told them to send the command to start running the motor on the aft uh aft tensioning mechanism and uh if you look at the obt right there if you can see you'll see three layers uh and um you stop roger you'll see uh you'll see the fourth layer uh rise here pretty soon and the meter status for the f pair is moving and it's worth mentioning you you used an acronym but this is actually a real-time animation that although we can't see what's going on with the observatory this is actually showing you what configuration it's in at the moment it's crazy based on that data it brings up yeah and that brings up a good point i know folks have been interested in you know why don't we have cameras uh you know nobody would love to see webb doing its thing right now than than us um so it's uh you know and and you know one of the things we we we really did want to put cameras on web uh however uh web changes shape a lot you can tell over over its deployment it's going through a multiple different configurations so we just didn't need one camera we would need multiple cameras in multiple locations uh the other thing about web is it's very very shiny on one side and it's incredibly dark on the other side by design and so we would have to take artificial lighting ultimately ultimately we wanted cameras but the engineering usefulness of those cameras just wasn't there unless it got really really complex fast the other thing is our cold side is really cold so any camera on that side would have to be designed almost from the ground up to survive on that side it would fall apart if not and we'd have debris floating around possibly it would it would uh you know unless we started from scratch so and then the other thing we're trying to keep our heat loads on that side very very low so all those things kind of combine together uh to uh to to say we we really want these uh but but we would we just can't we just can't do it so uh maybe from scratch from day one if we started over again we could implement them in so all that being said um we we take all of our telemetry that's coming down from web that's actually the numbers that we see on our screens and all the different information web is incredibly instrumented it's telling us everything about itself at all times it's position where all these deployments are but we take all that data and we synthesize it into a visual which we're seeing on the screen right now and uh so it we don't use it from an engineering perspective as far as this is what's really happening the numbers tell us what's really happening uh but uh our incredible ovt our observatory uh visualization tool and they put the they put a very cool tool together and uh this kind of gives us a little connection to web even though we can't see it this gives us that visual and spatial recognition of what's going on and it's been very useful to our engineers as we work through different uh you know different things that have been going on wonderful so um keith do you have any idea are we on sort of that and so a countdown about how much time it'll be until we know that this is completed let's see we're uh you can i you should be doing layer four on the aft right now um that's quite a long motor move uh for this so and i'm just i always pull up that here i'm listening to a bunch of different operational loops uh but they have got that started so we we should see that that going right now and again right now okay go ahead and show oh no please please go ahead keith just no re you know just going to reiterate that we have two corners there you can see in that view of the ovt there's actually two corners uh so we actually have two sets of mechanisms winding uh two sets of cables for each of those uh corners right now um you can see up in the corner there i must uh maybe you can see in the corner you'll see uh some of that data that's coming down from web that's counting up uh those are our uh instrumentation that tells us our our position of our motors and how many uh you know how our motors are turning and how fast i think that we have a few minutes here to maybe go back into some of the explanation as to why this heat shield is required you know the whole idea about infrared astronomy and why it's so imperative to keep this particular observatory so cold so um maybe i'll just start by you know a bit of background about the infrared and um infrared astronomy is something that i've been involved in uh since i was right out of my phd i i started working at the jet propulsion laboratory in caltech on the spitzer mission a long time ago um infrared radiation is something that we commonly think of as as heat radiation and uh you know infrared the uh the actual word infrared means beyond red so this is a color that our eyes don't see uh our eyes are only sensitive to a small range of all the colors of light or as we say electromagnetic radiation and uh infrared is what we commonly think of as as heat radiation and uh so that's uh that's something that we we need to keep the observatory very very cold in order to detect heat radiation from objects very very far away in space and in fact uh the science goals of web include detecting perhaps the farthest things we've ever discovered um one of the real advantages to infrared as you see here this is a hubble space telescope visible light image of the famous pillars of creation that's a giant gas cloud that's producing several stars inside it stars are being born and when you go to the infrared um hubble did have an instrument nick moss that did see a little bit into the infrared and you can see just what you're missing so the uh those those two images are both absolutely real it's just that the second one is an infrared light which is invisible radiation to your eyes uh infrared light has the ability to cut through dust and this is one of the the amazing properties uh just like you saw if you want to see stars and planets forming they do so inside giant clouds of dust and gas and normally the visible light is completely obscured by all of that dust uh there are other things like the very center of our galaxy uh the milky way galaxy which is a family of about a half a trillion stars that we belong to the center of the galaxy is on the order of about 30 000 light years away from us a light year being about 6 trillion miles the distance light travels in a year and that is also obscured by big clouds of dust we can't see into the center of our galaxy invisible light so there there are so many objects that infrared is going to be you know really really excellent to see we uh we we may also have some some roland's uh oh here we go yes uh here's a really lovely role in showing you that web and hubble uh hubble space telescope was designed mainly to see visible light the kind of light that our eye sees it did see a little bit into the ultraviolet and infrared uh web is optimized and designed to see infrared and amazingly that allows you to see farther away in the universe and that means farther back in time the farther away you look in space the longer light has taken to travel to you and there's an amazing property of our universe so the universe is expanding space itself is expanding and as that light from the very early universe travels through space the wavelength is actually stretched by the expansion of space so light that might have begun from starlight in the ultraviolet or visible light from the first generation of stars that wavelength of light has actually been stretched out into the infrared and so if you want to see galaxies that are very far away and very distant and here we actually see a graphic of how that works a galaxy uh is actually it seems to be receding from us in the expansion of space and that that light that would have started as visible or ultraviolet becomes infrared so one of the amazing science goals of webb is to be able to look back to a time probably only about 200 million years after the big bang and this is the era that we think the very first stars and galaxies were forming and so the amazing thing is the infrared light will allow us to actually see that far back looking at the origins of galaxies and stars themselves all right and uh michelle i'm sorry i'm just saying you can start seeing if you see you start to see that layer uh starting to rise up uh layer four on that aft side so uh slowly moving up now this must be very exciting for you can you can you give us a sense about uh here right now but we like the grass to grow really really slow uh so yes this is uh this is exciting i mean yesterday we did not think we were going to get through the first three layers um but the team you know again the the entire team uh just executed everything flawlessly we were only planning to do one yesterday but that went so well they said hey can we just keep going uh and we almost had to hold him back a little bit you know as the day was getting long and uh you know we don't want uh we want to make sure they're well rested uh but they were eager to go and uh so uh they're all excited this morning getting these last two out this was one of the things that we were talking about about the live broadcast you know we we uh we've just been following exactly when this is happening of course you know the communications team does not dictate how the observatory is unfolded the engineers do it when the conditions are right and people around the world have been joining us you know i i i actually uh was talking to somebody who was a fisherman up in alaska and i was telling him that okay now things are going faster than we expected now and the thing that he said to me was you have to respect the respect the catch you know where the things go go slow and when the way when the fish are biting you keep going and uh that's the the amazing thing that things were going so well that they decided to just go ahead and uh and keep on keep unfolding via the sunshield so that's what we're looking at right now and and michelle i think you're you're seeing two different rooms uh on the broadcast we have we have two main rooms we actually have multiple rooms uh but our one room uh that's shown below there uh that's our that's actually our flight control room so that's sort of the nerve center uh of the con of the entire mission op center that's where actually commands get sent uh to to web so you can imagine that's a that's a that's a key room we have our controller sitting on the front row um we have our mission ops manager uh who's uh sort of the ring ringleader controlling the whole show he's in there right now along with our management team uh all of our ground communications through our uh our ground stations around the world i'm not quite sure what station we're on now uh but uh madrid uh in spain canberra in australia and goldstone in california those are our ground stations and and all those coordination with them is actually done from that room uh our timeline people those are folks that are very very busy um creating schedules for us uh minute by minute of operation we change those timelines slightly every day and they're just they're incredible what they do keeping us uh keeping us straight and keeping everybody on schedule the top the top view there is actually our engineering support room that's where our deployments team is back in that back corner uh we have all of our subsystems our attitude control our propulsion engineers our communication engineers thermal engineers and and our system engineers are all in that room uh watching uh and and watching over and making sure everything's safely progressing right now excellent but just for any people that are joining us now on our broadcast um you're joining us for the the live commissioning of the james webb space telescope what's happening today is the very final stages of unfolding the the large incredibly innovative sun shield that will keep this telescope very very cold and the uh the ability to see very far into the infrared um infrared light as we were saying before is a form of heat that's that's how we normally think of it as the way we experience it but one of the things people often don't know is that objects that we think are very cold to human standards still emit quite a lot of infrared light and as keith had said before the uh the operating uh temperature of the telescope itself once it's shielded from the sun will be key that's pretty close to minus 400 degrees below zero fahrenheit is that correct that's correct yeah you know i i like we in uh you know on our side we always use kelvins uh which is an absolute scale from zero so yeah right around minus 400 uh our you know our telescope uh our instruments we have you know we have four instruments on board and it's really those camera detectors that are you know not not too much unlike your your your camera that you have on your phone but obviously much more elaborate and cold uh so it's those detectors that we're really trying to keep at that you know minus 400 degree rough temperature range to make sure they're absolutely uh the only photons of energy that are hitting those detectors are really coming from the object that that web is observing and of course it's an incredible idea to test something to that temperature and i believe we might actually have some some b-roll and some footage of testing of the web telescope i remember that some of that happened at the goddard space flight center we we have a uh a space environment chamber which actually simulates uh going down to very cold temperatures but then there was also testing done in houston as well um keith maybe you can talk to us a bit about some of the tests that web went through before its launch yeah um you know being being a cryogenic uh observatory presents incredible challenges on the ground for testing uh you know testing it at room temperature doesn't tell us a whole lot um everything about web is designed to be operated at these incredibly cold temperatures so like the mirror itself uh it actually is not a very good mirror at these temperatures it's actually gets better as it gets colder so in order for us to test the optical system or the instruments we have to take them into incredibly cold temperatures so we did some testing at the goddard space flight center uh in maryland uh that's where we took our entire instrument package uh put it in one of these chambers uh we actually pump liquid helium uh around the walls of this vacuum chamber and that's what drives us down to these uh really really cold temperatures once that instrument package was tested at those temperatures we introduced it to the telescope uh and uh the telescope and the instruments were integrated and it was too big for our facilities at the goddard space flight center so we took it all the way down to houston uh in texas to the johnson space center in chamber a chamber a is famous uh for being built to test the uh for the apollo program so again we completely retrofitted again worked with our team down at the johnson space center again incredible nasa team uh between centers and what we did there is we completely turned that chamber into an optical test facility that could be operated at our temperatures uh and and that that again an incredible achievement by by the team that did that work we were under uh we were under vacuum and under test down there i i want to say well over 100 days it was almost nearly four months uh yeah you can see some of the footage of us coming out of the chamber into the clean room so this was after the testing testing was done um so yeah we had a team we had pretty much the entire telescope and instrument team and spacecraft team down at johnson space center for nearly 100 days uh and if i think that was in 2017 so that was when hurricane harvey uh happened to to come through houston and uh and presented some challenges for us and our team down there uh supporting that test but we were able to test through through that hurricane uh you know that that really devastated that area and it actually you know a lot of the people that worked on the facilities and and were working at a johnson space sites space flight center were highly impacted in their personal life by harvey but they they kept at it and supported us so that was that was quite a that was quite a uh you know achievement for for for our team to and nothing's been done like that before you've net we've never taken something this large down an optical system uh to these temperatures and been able to do that so uh quite an end you know really really tough testing web on the ground that's why we like it in space it's at home it's always wanted to be there so that's why we're so excited where it is now absolutely well let's talk about you know you mentioned his home in space it's going to a very specific location in space it's not just going anywhere out there it's going to a point that we call the second lagrange point or or l2 and and maybe you can give us a little bit of a talk about you know where is this and and why would we put web at the lagrange point what is the lagrange point to begin with how about that yeah yeah so you know these lagrange points are interesting places where two large bodies like the earth and sun the gravity of them sort of interacts in a way where you can put objects there and with some control you can kind of keep them there so what's really nice about lagrange point two uh every large two body system has five lagrange points uh we use lagrange point two which is on the opposite side of the sun so the sun line and the earth we're a million miles away from the sun on the other side uh and and and what's nice about that as the earth goes around the sun uh the web just kind of tracks along with the with the earth as it goes in this animation you can see and we're always able to keep the earth and the sun uh in a line with us and that's really what lets us use a sun shade uh our sun shield like we have with webb that blocks out the earth and the sun and keeps webb in darkness all the time the other nice thing about the lagrange point is it is a million miles away but that's really not that far so it allows us to uh have a reasonably sized communication system uh we can we're going to create gigabytes of data every day from our cameras and our and our instrument detectors uh we have to get all that data to the ground and we don't really need huge antennas uh to do that so that's one nice thing about million miles sounds far but remember we're sending data from pluto and other missions back to earth and it takes a long time so this is good for us uh the other thing about lagrange point two is it's it's an it's far enough away from the earth also that uh it creates a nice cold area for us uh to do that so it's almost like it was uh it's just the best place to go if you want to do you know you want to do astronomy especially and if you want a cold telescope and that's just everything about the architecture the orbit everything has been about getting this telescope cold but in a reasonable distance to the earth for communications thank you for that again for people joining us you're looking at live coverage of the commissioning of the james webb space telescope the final stages of the unfolding of its huge incredibly spectacular heat shield and you're looking at a live image there from the mock the mission operations center that's at the space telescope science institute at johns hopkins university so as you can see there's all kinds of people standing around there i know that for me the last couple of days it's almost been like a kid getting up on christmas morning i've been checking my my email to see what was happening and how quickly this was going and today we're looking at the final stages of unfolding this uh this heat shield uh this is truly one of the most incredible and engineering marvels of the web telescope there are there are many but this is the first one that has to be uh accomplished before the rest of them can start to turn on and uh keith maybe this is a good time for a look ahead so you know once we have and i'm touching wood because we're still doing it but once we have these uh the sunshield completely unfolded what are some of the next things that need to happen before we have a full commissioned observatory yeah so you know for for our sunshield team um this this is this is a big day this is a big day for all of us uh to get this this sun shield out um so we will we will we will let them revel quite a bit um uh for the for the rest of the team uh for the rest of the deployments team that's still here um and for the rest of commissioning we have a lot of work to do uh we got a long way to go here so uh we'll we'll take this uh as we get it uh we take each one of our deployments as a small you know it's a small touchdown but the game's still going so next up is our telescope and you know that is you know that that's what it's all about uh so uh starting uh this evening uh we're gonna get some heaters on to start heating up the motors uh that actually do the deployment of our secondary mirror uh system uh we'll get that heated up uh and uh and and we'll get we'll get on with that uh tomorrow uh we'll start we'll start doing that operation so uh that's that's that's you know really again i got to make sure my timeline depending on how long the day goes we'll we'll update everybody when we're actually right actually going to do that so our secondary mirror system comes out you can see in this animation here and we actually have a lot of other deployables on web that we don't really talk about uh and not just because they're uh you know they're not as newsworthy maybe as a telescope or or the sun shield but we have a lot of radiator shades we have to get out tonight on the spacecraft uh the the sunshield and the telescope get all the attention sometime but our spacecraft is critical that we control all its temperatures and we don't quite have all of the uh sort of the shields out to protect our radiators which cool off our spacecraft we have to get those out uh this this evening they're much more i don't want to call them simple uh but they're they're much more typical type deployments uh that what that will do this evening for the spacecraft and then again we get into our telescope deployments over the next couple days uh culminating in the two wings which each wing has three of the 18 segments on it so you can see we'll do that uh what we call our port wing uh our plus j2 side and our in our coordinate system we call that port as you're looking forward and then our starboard wing uh on the other side so that should be later uh in the week and uh we have and then yes we will we will uh breathe a big sigh of relief at that point because we will have a fully deployed observatory um the next the next thing that our team will get into i'm just i'm just listening to see when this motor move will start um this is our longest move by the way this one on the app so this is a very long uh move on the aft on layer 4 here so that's why this is going on a little long a lot a lot of cable has to be drawn in for this specific configuration uh but next uh what what uh then we kind of turn over the telescope to the telescope team uh hopefully next week uh and what they're gonna start doing is uh we have all those 18 segments they're all locked down uh for launch we actually sort of snubbed them up tight for launch uh they're going to move those mirrors lead on up i can confirm the ask which then indicates that layer 4 is now [Music] you can tell the team maybe we're getting old hat at this after four layers i'm not quite sure so uh so yeah when layer one yesterday was uh quite the celebration in layer two maybe a little you know still some celebration but uh layer four we have to give it a little bit of love too uh and cheer it on so layer five is the big one coming up uh but yeah we're gonna turn that telescope over to our uh our telescope team and they're gonna move all those 18 mirrors off their launch stops each one will be moved a little bit they'll go around all 18 and that's pretty much a 24 hour operation uh and it's going to take them about 10 days to do that um so for for a lot of us we're looking forward to the grass growing even slower uh when it comes to deployment so we're actually looking forward to a little bit of a pace break there and and actually let them our telescope team is uh sort of biting at the bit to get started uh so they they can't wait to get that going so once they do all that uh once they wiggle those mirrors around and make sure they move and track their positions uh uh you know we'll we'll we'll be turning on a whole lot of other equipment we're actually got our instruments we're turning them on over the next couple weeks getting them going we have a cryo cooler on board i mentioned really really cold temperatures but we have one instrument that needs it needs it to be really really cold and that's our mid-infrared instrument provided by our european partners uh we actually have a cooler on board that takes that instrument all the way down to 6 kelvin so that's i don't know that's that's getting really really close to the minus 460 degree you know really really close to zero there so you see this animation of our instrument package in there that's our four instruments uh buried in the heart of web there so one of them is the the mid infrared instrument it's kind of uh covered up there on the left side and uh we actually going to turn on a cooler tonight uh to begin circulating warm gas up through its plumbing supplies uh to make sure we don't get any ice contamination on the lines because everything on the cold side right now it's getting really really cold and we don't want any water ice to contaminate their their cooler line so we'll be doing that tonight actually but yeah all this is about that 29 to 30 days of uh of uh on the edge but over the next two weeks uh it'll be a little bit slower pace uh ultimately culminating in our final mid-course correction uh sometime in late january which will insert us officially into that l2 orbit and at that point we would consider our spacecraft uh basically commissioned uh and at that point it's all about the telescope and the instruments and we just can't wait to turn it over to them well you mentioned the miri instrument and let's talk a bit about the sort of the whole instrument you know package that web has that the different instruments that are that are on it and the different capabilities they have uh so do you want to sort of walk us through the the four main science instruments yeah so we have a near infrared instrument again we're going to talk a little bit about the wavelengths that these are in our our our one instrument uh that's the we call the us contribution to the instrument package uh is the is the near camera that's been provided by the university of arizona uh in a partnership with with uh with lockheed so they have built that that is a fantastic imaging uh camera uh that will be one of our workhorse cameras uh uh doing a lot of lot of imaging for us the one the one interesting thing about that camera is uh uh if they are telescope scientists um i just want to let you know that those motor alarms that were okay yep so as you heard nancy as you heard nancy say there uh we typically get some alarms uh but uh over the course we've learned that those alarms are can be dismissed or they're just uh they're just routine now so uh everything about i mentioned all that data that comes down from web uh any spacecraft it's it's uh we we have alarms on them to alert engineers if there's any problems but we have a formal dismissive dismissing process which she was just referring to yeah so back to that near camera real fast it is our workhorse it also is our wavefront sensing camera and what that means is uh that camera is used by our telescope scientists to determine the uh optical imaging quality that's coming out of our telescope so they'll actually retrieve an image uh using near cam they'll study it on the ground they'll use that image on the ground to determine all the different settings that they need to do to align these 18 mirror segments so that's that's our near camera if you if you move on we have a camera or another instrument called the fine guider uh and nearest uh that's a near end another near infrared instrument uh but it's also our fine guider and uh that's provided by the canadian space agency uh in partnership with them and what that instrument does it also does it does incredible science uh with with some spectroscopy and uh it also is our guider uh so that guider actually works with our spacecraft attitude control system it also works with our uh what we call our fine steering mirror which is on the telescope and those all those systems working together uh actually help web point at whatever it's trying to image and take data from we have incredible precision pointing uh and we have observations that can be done up to 14 days so we can hold steady on anything that we're looking at for 14 days and the fine guider from canada is is a key part of that we have a near infrared spectrograph again that's sort of a partnership uh between our european partners and the united states um and and that is really one of our key science instruments you're not going to get you know the images out of that what that instrument does is it breaks light down into its wavelengths and that's really a key uh you know i'll let you talk about that in a second michelle i'm gonna i'm just saying but that's a near spectrograph um i'll let you go into breaking down light uh because that is key for for what we're trying to do science-wise uh and then we have this mid-infrared instrument which is going further into the deep infrared uh and that's really one of the key instruments for helping us confirm some other observations as far as how far away different objects are but michelle you can definitely definitely pick it up from there i'm running out of my knowledge based on on these instruments yeah this is the thing that you know as astronomers we're just so excited about there's so many different uh components of web i mean not just the the beautiful images that will be produced but as you said keith the idea of breaking light into its components is a technique called spectroscopy and uh this is really an incredibly powerful technique because you might ask yourself when astronomers say you know we know what the stars are made of you know they're made of you know mostly hydrogen and helium but usually a little smattering of everything else uh you know what you know when we see a star exploding and we say oh you know we've just seen the generation of the element gold how do we know that um and then there are also questions about you know how do we know for example how far away a galaxy is or how fast the expansion of the universe is taking something away and all of that goes down to this technique called spectroscopy so um very simply put spectroscopy is separating light out into a rainbow that that's really all it is but the amazing thing is is that scientists can then analyze very very carefully how much light is coming in each color and the the graphic that you're looking at shows you so this is a light from a uh in this case from a star that has a planet around it the idea is that there is an exoplanet planet around another star and the uh the one of the incredible science goals of web is to be able to analyze the atmospheres of planets around other stars and if you if you can pass the light that's shining through the atmosphere of a planet so the starlight is shining through the atmosphere of a planet around it as the planet goes through basically a little eclipse it's actually in front of the star and then you take that light and you separate it out into a rainbow and we see here the graphic so this is a planet you can see that little dark disk represents a planet that's going in front of a star and the planet has an atmosphere there are different layers of the atmosphere here in different colors green purple and a yellow color and as the light from the star behind the planet shines through that atmosphere then we get some amazing observations about what the atmosphere is made of and if i could go to the the graphic that we were looking at just a minute ago when you actually take that rainbow of light and you measure the the the very jagged kind of squiggly uh blue line you see there is simply a graph of how much light is coming in each color and the incredible thing is that different atoms and molecules so for example oxygen or the molecule o2 which is how oxygen usually appears in an atmosphere or say nitrogen or carbon dioxide important molecules water vapor we can actually detect those molecules because every atom and every molecule will absorb light slightly differently and if we can measure very carefully how much light is coming in each color we can actually see the presence of molecules that are absorbing different color bands of light and so here you see an atmosphere where it's possible that we can actually detect if there's oxygen in the atmosphere or ozone which is o3 three oxygen atoms water vapor carbon dioxide and um one thing that that web may or may not be able to do this is this is certainly very ambitious is it might be able to detect things called bio markers and those are uh basically fingerprints in the spectrum that could be related to the presence of life the the main science goal of course is to find environments that might be earth-like they might be friendly to life but you see something there called the vegetation jump and uh that actually may be present due to uh plant life absorbing certain life and again you know while we don't know that this will be possible you know the main thing that we're looking for are environments friendly to life there is a small possibility that we could actually look at an exoplanet and see something that indicated a possible likelihood of life there so that's that's something that's that's very exciting for us so that's about spectroscopy so yeah these are all you know incredibly powerful techniques that we're looking forward to doing in the infrared infrared turns out to be the best place to do these a lot of the most important molecules for life have very important absorption bands they absorb light in the infrared and so that's another incredible use of infrared astronomy so um just for those of you that are joining us uh you are now looking up here we see an animation of some of the very important molecules for life and as we mentioned before as a planet goes around a star some of that star light shines through the atmosphere of the planet itself and when that happens we can look very carefully at the different colors that are absorbed uh and we actually find out what chemistry is in that atmosphere itself so you see that that the starlight shining through the atmosphere of a planet around another star and eventually ending up inside the james webb space telescope and we'll be able to analyze it from there so for those of you that are joining us uh you are looking at live coverage of the commissioning of the james webb space telescope today is an exciting day because we were looking we're looking at the completion of the uh the commissioning the unfolding and and in just a little while the tensioning of the very last bit of the james webb space telescope heat shield um i think that actually it might be a nice time to uh to go to our our social media feed because uh we bet we will be able to take some of your questions live uh for those of you that would like to do this you can use the hashtag asknasa and i have been receiving some of the social media questions right now so uh so keith as we look in here at the live footage of the mission operations center at the johns hopkins university the space telescope science institute maybe you and i can take a bit of a hack at some of these uh uh social media questions the the first one comes from one of our users on twitter that says will the telescope need periodic tensioning during its lifetime or is this a one-off thing so so keith could you answer that question is this something that we're going to do again or is this just the one time we ever tensioned this heat shield um no we do not plan to ever retention uh and that was that was a chosen thing to do in the design so all the materials everything about the analysis of the design uh has shown that we don't we don't need to do that so uh uh everything will wear but but we have uh our our layers are actually tensioned on springs over its lifetime those springs will sort of take out any of those uh those changes let's see we have a question um uh that somebody from bob on twitter is saying um how do you keep the sun shield in the correct orientation does it require constant adjustments over time or is the orbit set and it stays in the correct position forever so that's a question about unfolding the telescope yes yeah it's it's yeah it's it's locked in position uh we if this is its final position it'll stay in that again everything is designed to uh be a little flexible uh as temperature changes uh uh decreases in temp uh you know temperatures change uh it will it will vary but it's all gone all patients this is mama on ops let me just give you a quick status of where we're at you can see we've completed car 622 player 4 and that call was made earlier before we get into layer 5 on car 626 we're going to go ahead and reassess our our uh our communications with our medium gain antenna and uh and our signal strength there so once we evaluate that and see if we need to repoint the dish or continue on uh we'll take either of those actions before we proceed so that's where we'll stay for just a little bit while we let the team in the back go ahead and uh do that analysis so standby okay um i think i think you heard our our mission ops manager there uh we are playing the ops loop right how can i ask that um yeah so uh we finished layer four um uh as you this is live you're getting to hear some of the stuff that goes on every minute of every day uh and one thing we're trying to do is make sure our communication coverage is good so they're going to take a little pause it sounds like uh to to to to do that so we can take some more questions while they uh get their uh communications uh established web is communicating right now uh just fine but uh they sounds like they want to make some adjustments so we were just talking a little bit about the question that we got uh when we were when we were getting uh uh we were getting an announcement from the mock uh the the uh the viewer was actually asking about whether there's a any sort of correction to the orientation needed so i mean but will will web have any any sort of engines to kind of keep its orientation right shield pointing toward the sun yeah yeah so we we we move the entire observatory when we pull so the all of web moves together as one sort of rigid body when we uh move move around uh to look at things so uh and we and we maneuver it with reaction wheels we actually spin their six wheels and side we spin those wheels up to different speeds uh the the torque on those motors uh the web will actually spin around that so uh you know it's the classic uh you know the bicycle wheel and trying to turn things up you turn the other way uh web has nothing to hold on to so when those wheels spin it gets spun the other way so really really slowly so we use those wheels is actually how we uh maneuver and point every once in a while we we we do have a a propulsion system on ball engines uh and they can be fired too for more dramatic uh attitude changes okay looking uh see another another answer from twitter um i uh it says is it extremely hot just behind the shield and extremely cold just in front of the shield and this is a question that we talked about a little bit earlier in the broadcast but there are people that uh that are just joining us can you talk a bit about the the temperature differential uh between the uh the hot side and the cold side of the heat shield yeah so i yeah so the hot side that that sun-facing layer we've done everything we can to make it as cool as possible but it's still really really hot uh it it runs around the temperature of you know of boiling water um you can see some of the temperature some of the temperatures right there honey we roughly say 200 degrees fahrenheit on that on that hot side so each layer gives us about a hundred year drop uh so the cold side layer uh it runs about uh i i we're in celsius or whatever but in kelvins uh the warm side is roughly about minus 350 degrees fahrenheit uh and then that telescope is right around minus 400 so that kind of gives you an idea that differential check out our where is web website and that'll kind of give you a flavor for the the temperature differential you were mentioning the where is web uh website and that can show you actually you know where the observatory is on its way out to l2 and uh um one of the things that we actually uh mentioned briefly at the beginning of the broadcast but we haven't had a chance to go into any detail is the fact that um there was something happened during the launch that was actually very uh very fortunate and will extend the life of the the observatory we hope uh so keith give us a sense about what that was what what what happened and what was the advantage of it yeah so again going all the way back to launch day uh the error we asked arion give us a velocity uh when they when they separated from us in that video so we we specified exactly what velocity which is speed and direction uh we wanted uh from them and uh and and that that velocity that we expect from them uh is what uh was aiming us towards l2 uh at the right speed that we needed uh however you know there is some small errors to that and we don't quite know uh how much those errors are so we we plan and for the worst case uh we and and and webb will need to use its onboard propulsion system to sort of make up that uh so uh um but since we got such a good trajectory or good performance out of the ariane 5 which we which we counted we would given their their history of good performance uh we didn't use very much we didn't use as much fuel as we needed for that first correction we had designed everything in the system if everything goes worst case we would still have at least 10 years of mission life but basically everything went best case uh so we have significantly more uh than than 10 years we don't have the exact number yet but eventually over commissioning as we can continue to study our propulsion system uh as we continue to learn more about how web operates will fine-tune that number and and get it out later in commissioning uh but uh when the number comes out i think everybody will really really pleased uh that we're significantly uh use less fuel and we're going to significantly exceed that 10-year mission life of fuels yeah excellent all right going back to our social media questions here let's see um so we have a uh somebody named sun frog on twitch is saying how much space is between the shield layers in in inches or feet how far apart are these different layers we're looking at yeah um yeah i don't know if they can roll that test roll again uh from from from the test that we did i it it's roughly a foot and a half uh roughly a foot and a half to hold if it's about six feet from uh one side to the other so uh you know depending on where it is it's a little bit thinner uh on once you know down towards the uh the short side and it's a little bit further spread on the fore and aft as you see in that obt right now um so yeah roughly five to six feet of separation uh one foot between each layer i don't know what that is maybe this this it's not that far apart but that's all it takes to provide the coolant excellent all right um let's see john hague on twitter asks what would happen if the sunshield tore while you were deploying it is there a backup for this it was it probably there were actually several different questions that we got about this about little tears or anything yeah yeah uh yeah tears or tears are a big concern uh and then again everything that's been done as far as the design if we do get a tear what we want what what concerns us even more than a tear is that tear propagating throughout the entire sun shield so what we have we have a system of rip stops incorporated into each layer so if we do get any small tears it'll only go a short distance and then stop as we have reinforcements around so that's all been incorporated into design and then again everything you're seeing about the deployment why it looks like it's grass growing is to be slow methodical so we make sure that we're not putting any any stress on the membranes excellent um so one of the things that people saw when they actually went to the uh the website where is webb is that the web appears to be slowing down right now so uh um can you give us a sense about why why would it seem like web is slowing down yeah yeah so really it's uh we uh as we leave the earth we're going to l2 we're going to that million mile mark and then we kind of you know for in very simplistic term think about we stop uh we don't really stop but uh we we with our relative velocity to the earth remember as we go around the sun a web is going with us and it's always maintaining that million mile distance so essentially we're stopped with respect to the earth so we see we left uh we were multiple we were several kilometers per second in our speed when we came off the arion and as we get further and further from earth the earth's gravity is slowing us down uh and we're trying everything is about making our speed just right so as we get about a million miles away uh we get into that l2 orbit so you'll see that you'll see that slow down more and more as we get closer to uh our l2 uh orbit insertions thank you so i just got the message that we're going to take a brief pause on our commentary while they look at some communication uh up to the telescope we will be back and we will be taking more of your social media questions you can use the hashtag asknasa and i'm michelle thaller here with keith parrish and you are looking at live commissioning of the james webb space telescope the final phases of the unfolding of the heat shield and we will be here throughout the process we'll take a brief pause now but we'll be back very soon so thank you so much for joining us uh yeah mom um [Music] we can talk about that uh later if you want but or i can um talk to you now yeah we will execute 12. oh see this is on us yes sir we're going to go ahead and get ready for car 626 are you ready who will see us go all right copy that ms here you go yeah msu's ago have to go sir you go si is the go copy go away center you go wayfriends go up it goes all stations this is mom on ops we're go at this time to finish sun steel tensioning layer five oh see this is mama knox let me see yes sir you can go ahead and pick up at step two of car 626 and you can coordinate with dev ops on this loop copy that mom and oc uh you will be executing steps one through twelve twelve inclusive uh one through twelve only and then we will hold copy steps one through twelve including twelve thank you and i see this is depop sign up go ahead depops yeah so when you're ready we can go um pull up 626.002 due to frame eight adapts rock looks good that command line looks good you're going to execute executing and your go to continue copy go to continue okay i can confirm operations frame eight and at step six two six dot zero um we are below the t temperature 290 so we do require self heating and we have oscar 349 or step 626.004 copy that depops we have cr349 queued up in the central window now um yeah i see that i don't sit on the command line though the cr looks good and that command line looks good you're good to execute executing and you're going to continue kathy okay stand by while we review the motor move parameter anybody and oc uh the parameters look good you're going to move the plus j2 mid boom motor go and in the yellow window you can queue up the stop ratchet and we will hang out here waiting for the motor to warm up okay huh i see this is step up on up oc go ahead okay at this time you are going to execute the du stop deploy at step five uh command line looks good you go to execute execute and you're going to continue happy gap okay i can confirm motor stop and then we are going to execute the motor move at 626.006 and that command line looks good you're going to execute executing and you're going to continue happy gap stand by while we review our motor move parameters and oc your go to move the plus j2 mid boom motor happy go and diameter move status with moving project science tomorrowland office and stepping up console step lead on off deployment status update i can confirm the plus j2 latch on layer 5. thank you dev ops that's good news good news oh see this is step up you are going to execute du stop deploy copy executing and you're going to continue copy go you're watching live coverage of the historic event of commissioning the james webb space telescope today we are looking to actually finalize the tensioning of the amazing heat shield the uh the fifth layer of the heat shield has begun tensioning and uh we are going to be continuing continuing with you here through this amazing event our live coverage and commentary will be resuming so please submit your social media questions using the hashtag asknasa and at 11 30 a.m eastern time we will begin our live commentary again week the other the the fifth the fifth layer of the heat shield is currently being depleted being tensioned so everything is going well we'll see you in just a few minutes and you're going to continue kathy go to continue and by while we review our motor move parameters anybody and oc you're going to move the minus j2 mid boom motor happy go for move and then oh so you can queue up the stop command in the yellow window and the minus j2 mid boom motor status was moving and it's gone to hold we are going to stay here until we reach approximately 293 ish okay and oc we can execute the d e stop deploy at this time copy execute and you're going to continue copycat and i can confirm the meter stopped and we're going to continue with 66.011 and that command line looks good you're going to execute execute and you'll go to continue copy go to continue standby for review anybody and oc you're going to move the minus j2 mid bim motor happy go for move and the motor status is moving oh and oc you can cue up the stop command in step 12 roger project science this is mom on ops report to the flight control room please science welcome set bleed on off i can confirm the minus j2 latch event for layer 5. and oc this is step up on ops you are going to execute the deu stop deploy it's kidding and you're going to continue that again okay and i can confirm that the motor move is stopped we're ready to continue with 626.013 uh du to operate frame zero command line looks good you're going to execute and you're going to continue now begin okay i can confirm operations frame zero and if step 626.014 depth lead has confirmed the team is ready to continue and we're ready for 66.015. the command line looks good you're going to execute hitting and you're going to continue copy go to continue and standby while we review motor move parameters anyway and oc you are going to move the ford mts motor pair kathy go for move and the motor status is moving and oc you can queue up the stop command roger i'm here hello you are watching the live commissioning of the james webb space telescope today we have the exciting news to bring you that we are going we are looking to finish the uh unfolding and tensioning of the heat shield and and right now they are working on the final layer the fifth layer of the heat shield and i'm i'm michelle faller i'm an astronomer at goddard space flight center and uh i'm working from my home today because of the coveted pandemic so i ask that you all uh give us some patience with this broadcast we want to make sure that people have a chance to see live this this this wonderful and historic event and i'm joined by keith parish keith is actually right now live at the space telescope science institute at the johns hopkins university in baltimore and above us you can see live footage of the mock or the mission operations center and this is where people are working on the heat shield right now so um keith we took a brief pause in our commentary uh could you bring us up to date what is going on right now with the james webb space television yeah we uh took a a short pause uh we're currently uh in community currently all of our data coming down from web is coming through our canberra ground station on australia so shout out to our canberra folks down there uh we're currently in communication with them we'll be in there uh for another couple hours until we hand over to our madrid station in spain so we took a little pause our you know we always want to make sure we're good to go before we go into the next operation uh so it took a little pause to make sure all of our communication with canberra solid and and it is so we just resumed uh layer five tensioning uh and uh we actually have done the uh we have six corners to uh tension uh and we've tensioned the first two we are actually currently uh tensioning what we call the four the the the uh the four side uh which you can see up on what we call our observatory visualization tool right there and you can see just a little bit of separation up there at the top as that layer spreads on those uh on that corner and once again for those people that are just uh joining us um the uh the graphic that you're seeing to the the left of your screen is actually correct in real time as to what web is doing right now and that's based on data and telemetry coming down from the telescope is that correct yeah that's right so all that all that information is coming down from from web right now uh our team that created this uh what we call the ovt that's our acronym for it uh it takes all that data and it creates this uh visualization of what's going on on web and it's uh it really kind of gives us a connection uh to web and is what it's doing we know this isn't a live a live shot of web but it really does give us sort of that spatial awareness uh that that the engineers need again we're it's really about the data the ones and the zeros and all the all the telemetry that's coming down and we have thousands and thousands of data points coming down so we take all that data and uh we make these images uh to tell us exactly what physical uh configuration that that web is in right now and you can see on the you can kind of see as you go down to the to the to the i do i have i don't know i do have my model here i don't know if i can throw it um so what we are doing right now is we're tensioning up on this side right here uh you kind of see a little bit uh at this front corner here we've already done uh the physical just a note just a note to the directors of the broadcast uh could we get a picture of keith oh i'm sorry i'm pointing to something you can't see can we uh can we get keith back on camera thank you there you go there you are um big too okay uh yeah so uh this is a model of our and i gotta get it right here so we're actually we're actually tensioning up right now you can see on an ovt when when i'm not on camera you can see uh this is what we call our forward uh part of our sunshield and we're tensioning layer five right there if you swing around this way we've already done these two we've already done this side and we've already done this side so right now we're on uh four and then we'll eventually do our our uh aft this is our aft side we'll do that and right after we finish our four so yeah we are we're running out of cables to wind up uh we started out yesterday moving 90 cables uh and right now we're down to our our last 18 cable so uh the team has been winding those up for and that and that's what actually creates that tension on the sunshield you know we've gotten some questions from social media and uh remember that you can use the hashtag ask nasa if you'd like to ask some questions live and there's a there's a couple actually that talk about the shape of the the sun shield so there's uh you know what what what why was this shape determined uh the the this person says why wasn't it oval shaped or circular can you give us a sense about the design of the sun shield and and why it looks the way it does yeah the the sun shield is actually shaped uh basically it's no bigger than it has to be uh any any larger uh than it is and that would have been even more engineering challenges so uh we have requirements on how much sky uh that the telescope is can see at each time and then the uh the shape of the telescope uh of the or the shape of the sun shield lets us pretty much observe uh 60 of the sky at any time so we can pitch forward uh with respect to the sun uh and and and still keep our secondary mirror in shadow we can pitch back quite a way well over 50 degrees and still keep our telescope in shadow so we can kind of tilt the telescope back and forth quite a bit uh front and back now on the sides we only roll about five degrees each way to the side so that's why the tel that's why the sun shield has this uh sort of uh narrow shape on the sides it's 50 some feet on the sides and it's 70 some feet long on the length and then instead of making it uh a square uh or or a rectangle we don't we don't need it to do that so we we tried to we tried to limit as much material as we had to handle on orbit uh so that's what gave it this sort of uh iconic kite shape uh is that it didn't need to be a anything other than a kite to provide that uh you know provide our telescope with that view of the sky at all times and i should just say as a shout out shout out that was andra on twitter that asked that question and then uh as we see there's a graphic up here about just how much temper differential there is between the the hot side and the cold side of the heat shield um one of our uh one of our social media guests asked uh does the observatory itself does the mirror itself pan around a lot look at the sky another deployment status update i can confirm the latch event on the forward mts pair for layer five okay all right good news thank you good news okay so what you just heard there you just heard our depth lead hillary uh she just told us that uh we are finished with the forward uh so we've done uh we've done four of our six corners and i see you so uh back to your question uh or back to the question we we maneuver the whole observatory uh we don't we don't we the whole observatory maneuvers to look at you know whatever it's imaging whether it be a galaxy or other object uh there was early studies that actually moved the telescope relative you'll hear us being interrupted by live uh updates from the mock the mission operations center so uh don't worry for pausing we're listening to what they're saying yeah exactly right so that's our uh that's our uh uh devops engineer nancy she's uh communicating again with our flight controllers in the room to uh communicate what commands that our deployments team want to send up to uh to web so yeah again we just we just maneuver the whole observatory it's just better to maneuver it make it nice and rigid and and solid on orbit and just maneuver that versus trying to try to maneuver the telescope that's again that's what really drove that sunshield zero one eight i have confirmed that death lead and the team are ready to continue so we can go to 626.019 and that command line looks good you're good to execute executed are you starting to get excited keith yeah we're just we're actually sending the command to start turning those moves so let's talk a bit about the importance of the sunshield and there there are many different aspects of that um this really is an exciting piece of technology and and you know this is something that for a space observatory like this we've never tried before can you can you give us sort of a pan back sort of the 30 000 foot look at and why the sun shield is so incredible and i see your vitamin d aft mpf motor pair kathy here we go so uh i i do like to let people hear the commanding there because it's uh really you know it's interesting uh you know there's there's more than just one command that goes up our uh our flight controllers and our debt ops lead there they're they're they're checking everything that's coming back and making sure that the next command is is the right command so they're double checking and double checking so that's a lot of the back and forth you hear there uh but uh as you can see on the graphic there you'll see our motor counter status change to moving yep there we go so you'll start seeing those counts uh that's uh what we call a field director which try which keeps track of our motor position and you'll see those counts starting to uh increase as that layer and separate it and those cables are or wound in so i think the big you know back to your question the big the big challenge with with this this type of deployment is we're doing five layers uh we have to handle five layers and uh and everything it it we're pretty good at deploying things that are rigid uh but the the membranes are rather rather you know they're floppy and they they want to float around we have cables that we don't want to get slack so we're really trying to do an intricate operation uh right now 560 some thousand miles away from the earth and control every aspect of the position of these layers and i think that's really where the challenge has been uh is is to make sure that we understand every every second of the deployment where these layers are uh so there's a lot of features built in uh that aren't really apparent uh in any of the things that you're seeing right now that keep these layers very controlled uh and make sure that they're not floating places that we don't want them to be and that's that's really been the the you know really one of the challenges for such a large sort of floppy deployable item that this sunshield is you know speaking of it being kind of large and floppy we've gotten several questions on social media so um siobhani from our youtube feed asks what happens if if even one of the sun shields get damaged and there are other ones about micro meteorites so you know tiny little bits of rock flying around in space well what's the how resilient does this heat shield something like that oh it's it's everything from the materials that it was that you know sort of it's raw materials uh that was chosen for its strength uh to be able to handle the environment of space that what it's coated with to make these uh really you know sort of uh colors is uh is coded uh is everything has been designed it's got lots of reinforcements you can see in some of these uh this video of the real shield now uh you can see a lot of seams i do want to give a shout out to our our membrane we had a vendor that created these membranes and had to stitch them all together so to speak uh and and it's completely reinforced so that if we do get tears uh they won't propagate uh and as far as micrometeoroids we do expect to be hit with micro meteoroids the good thing is that uh they're not very big and they won't do much damage so we uh we actually one of our early developments for this material is we actually took it uh and hit it with uh high velocity projectiles uh moving several kilometers per second to make sure that uh make sure the material could withstand that so over the lifetime we do expect really really tiny microscopic holes uh to develop but again that's all accounted for in design so uh it it it'll it's it's rather rugged once it's all tensioned up uh it'll it'll be fine and uh you were talking about the fact that this is this sort of large huge sail that we're you know unfolding a little bit by a little bit in space and of course while there isn't any air or atmosphere where webb is there is something called the solar wind and the solar wind is actually a wind of high energy particles that are coming off from the sun so not not a wind in the way we think of it but a wind of actually high energy particles does the solar wind have any effect on the heat shield and it's appointing oh yeah so we get we get something called solar pressure uh and again if you know the whole concept of solar sails uh you know to possibly travel around our solar system you know with free propulsion from the sun uh it's a very small force very very tiny it's it's not like the wind blowing uh but it is a it is it is a force it's a it's a physical force uh the sun uh the solar pressure that hits the the sun shield so we have to account for that uh it will try to move us around uh the biggest thing that it does to us is it it's offset so uh uh what i mean by that is uh the the solar pressure will tend to try to turn us uh and we counter that churning uh force uh with with some reaction wheels in the spacecraft and then ultimately uh those wheels get spinning so fast we have to fire our uh onboard propulsion system to unload them and that takes fuel to do so uh on uh i think early earlier in the week we deployed something called our aflap off the back of the sunshield main structure and that aflap is intended to sort of again sort of a sailing analogy sort of the counter almost like a little bit of a rudder uh to help us counter some of those forces and ultimately that leads us to using less fuel on orbit and is the uh that's something that is a limitation to some degree for this observatory it does have a finite amount of fuel to do that is is that correct that's that'll be one of the lifetime limitations that's right so uh you know fuel fuel is our only known uh limiting life item on board uh so so obviously we wanted to take a lot of it uh and and we everything worked we worse cased everything uh and then we said hey how once we worst case all of our conditions meaning we don't get a very good injection from our arion 5 vehicle we do all of our burns late they're not very efficient we have lots of momentum that we have to unload lots of solar pressure all those things go bad we still want 10 years of fuel and so all of our worst case calculations is how we came up how many uh kilograms of of fuel to take on board uh fortunately so far those worst case conditions uh i think as amy said yesterday we conservative so all those conditions so far have not been on the worst case our execution of that first burn and again everything has been really really good so we expect to use significantly less than we expect to have much more than the 10 years i'll just mention that the question about the solar sail effect on the uh the heat shield comes from alan on facebook so thank you very much for your question there's um there's a question coming in that maybe i could take a little bit of a crack at answering myself and and keith certainly you can uh you can chime in on this but mike on facebook asks who will be able to use web just nasa and i think this is a chance to kind of talk a bit about the international nature of this this mission so um absolutely it will not be just nasa that is using the web space telescope um the web space telescope has several major international partners uh our our big partners are the european space agency and the canadian space agency and so there is a time allocation to the major partners uh you know in this mission that so so the european astronomers people working with the european space agency and also the canadian space agency however like hubble the webb telescope is a world observatory and what will happen in the future is that there will be committees of astronomers that every year will review proposals from all over the world from teams of scientists who want to use the web telescope for their own research and again while the main organizations responsible for the operation and the building and testing of web we'll have some time allocated to them automatically a lot of this will be open to the public in the sense that professional astronomers from all around the world will be able to use it and it's not just the uh the observations themselves the other thing that's really really important to talk about is the archive that's the the data taken by the web telescope when you're an astronomer say you know i i actually have been honored to use the hubble space telescope myself in the past um you you write a proposal to this committee of scientists every year that then ranks uh the proposals in terms of their their priority their science priority and uh and then you you get your data based on whether you make that priority list and if you don't you can apply again next time and all of that but that all goes into an archive and that archive after a certain amount of time is public and anybody can use the data so if you're a scientist that's won the proposal you you should get a first chance to look at your data and make your discoveries and observations that you want to but then eventually that that data gets put into an archive where anybody can use the data so this is a world treasure it's not just nasa that will be using this observatory and it's not just nasa that built the observatory and launched the observatory this has been an international program from the very beginning so that's something we're very proud of let's see so uh um i know you know i mean i i'm getting you know more and more excited you know the the heat shield was a tremendously complex part of this observatory so for people that are just joining us maybe you could give us some sense uh mike a little bit about uh the number of actuators maybe talk about what an actuator is and the number of things that had to happen to get this thing to to unfold and detention it was it's something that you know all of us are just you know thrilled to see happening so beautifully in front of us okay give us a sense of that yeah so uh you know one of the big the big things that you know as we've talked about is the amount of mechanisms that that we use uh specifically the the pin so when we fold up we fold up all these layers we have to sort of secure them to the primary structure which we deployed uh back on day three after we launched so those those pins there was 107 of them uh and and we had to sort of spear all the material put holes in the material and actually push them through to connect our structure here you're seeing our solar array come out in this graphic again we got we were able to capture that live uh on launch day and that's that antenna that's currently communicating with canberra so here's these forward structures all of the material that's now out uh you know out is as was pinned to this structure meaning it was actually uh there was 107 pins that went through it and actually held it down to that structure we had to release all 107 of those uh pins and and we and we did that over the last few days and you know and then we had this cover roll up this cover rolls up as we release those pins you can see the aft going there and in the front you can see our cover rolling up as we release these pins now this was our big event on new year's eve when we released the final set of pins and the covers unrolled and we actually used these telescoping booms to pull out all five layers so this was quite uh the big event for us as far as changing webb's overall appearance uh it made a dramatic change in our temperatures uh when we did these uh two booms again you can see that cover rolling under right there and this is our other side coming out so i think releasing those 107 pins uh was was quite an achievement uh again uh because uh you know one doesn't release then then our membranes are trapped and we would have had to go into a different contingency operation so again you're seeing uh what's going on right now uh this is uh old footage of when we tested the sun shield on the ground for the very last time uh so everything you're seeing in this video right now in this time lapse uh which is probably just a few seconds long is is taking us yesterday and today to do so uh you can see in this time lapse uh the last layer is tensioning up and you can see what a dramatic uh change that it takes uh as it is uh stretched out like that and uh we have a question from gracequirrell on twitter and this is one that maybe i can take to give you a little bit of a break mike but i'm sorry break but you can jump right in so grace girl on twitter asks why does it take until june to start science operations with the james webb space telescope and what else needs to happen after reaching out too and i think this is a chance to give us a little bit of a look ahead about what's going to be going on uh after today and after the heat shield happens so one of the things i can say is that a lot of this has to do with with cooling the telescope down uh this is an infrared telescope the reason we have these incredible heat shields is so that the observatory itself can be very cold very sensitive to the infrared radiation from space and so the things that will be happening in the next few days personally i'm really looking forward to the deployment of the secondary mirror there are these very large boom structures that will come out in front of web and that will bring the focusing mirror the the primary mirror is that beautiful 18 segmented gold mirror that all of us have been uh talking about but then there's also the secondary mirror that needs to come out on these booms that the uh all of these 18 mirror segments will focus the light up to and then that light will be actually reflected back down into the instrument package for web and so that's one of the big deployments that will happen in the coming week just listening exactly right that's our next one that we're really really excited about because that's uh you know again the sun shield is great engineering um it's absolutely needed for this mission um and and it's it's incredible um but the sun shield is there to to cool what we really want and that's the that's that telescope and their science instruments so we really want to get those deployed you know deployed next and then after that we have the full deployment of the primary mirror so the uh that the that 18 segment mirror has two wings uh the wings will both be deployed so you can see here in this animation there's the secondary mirror that's coming out on this large boom that's the focusing mirror and you can see that it'll be focusing things down to the sort of that that black protrusion coming out of the center of the gold mirror and then after that the two wing segments will also be deployed and uh once that happens we will have the full uh fully commissioned and uh huge thing is it takes about two months for our telescope engineers and scientists to sort of align it and and and sort of you know focus it so to speak uh and to make it working at an operational you know as an actual telescope and then it takes another couple months you know alongside of that it takes another couple months for our instrument teams to get their instruments calibrated uh and get them all uh checked out so it all adds up to about six months uh before we would actually get some of our first science and and it really that cool down uh drives a lot of what we call our entry criteria like we cannot let uh we you know the telescope can't do certain things until it reaches certain temperatures so that cool down on top of these really really precise operations that our instrument and our telescope teams need to do all kind of add up to that that six month period or four months period on top of the you know what we're doing right now in this first month one two months you've heard us say before just what a technological marvel the webb telescope is and talking about some of these deployment activities these commission activities that are going on um uh keith there mentioned the the idea that the alignment of the mirrors needs to happen and of course we have we have 18 wonderful gold-coated uh segmented mirrors but they all need to work as one continuous telescope mirror and and so part of this commissioning will be to actually do focusing of each of the 18 segments the the uh keith maybe you gave us a sense that the the segments can all move independently is that correct that's right they they can they can tilt uh they they can yeah they're they can move they can move in in a lot of different directions uh and again it's not a lot of movement uh but but uh but they all can move in different directions uh to align themselves uh they can also be pushed and pulled a little bit to sort of change their radius of curvature a tiny tiny bit uh so all those different uh movements have to be well well coordinated and it's quite the uh uh quite the quite the challenge uh that the optics team has coming up uh for them to do that so that's that's really really groundbreaking you know really groundbreaking what they're getting ready to go into uh which is aligning those 18 segments so they have full control over all of them uh but even though they have full control over them they have to get the data back down to the ground or where they are uh and again the you know a lot a lot of ground system processing to compute uh the next move and then they'll just keep cycling through and at the same time they're imaging you know they're taking reference stars to make and using those reference stars that to help them help them align and focus the telescope it's a very painstaking process it's groundbreaking uh um but it but it but it's going to be really really really something when they get it all done and one of the the other parts of the commissioning that i think is is just incredible is that because this telescope is operating it's just low temperatures a lot of people are familiar with the idea that materials expand and contract and change shape as they change temperature and so these mirror segments which are are made from beryllium that's it's a it's a type of metal that behaves very well under very cold uh circumstances keeps it shape it works very well um the beryllium segments actually were ground uh to a curvature that isn't correct when it's at room temperature they actually need to cool down to this operating temperature that we said which is close to minus 400 degrees fahrenheit and it's only at that operating temperature that the curvature of the mirrors are correct is that right keith yeah yeah and again that you're going back you know you know again the development history of is uh just doing that very operation and making it super standby i see something happening in the mock people are getting excited okay here we go mom i can confirm the final signature on the aft mts which indicates that all five layers of the sunshield are fully tensioned how exciting significant milestone accomplished job well done sunshield team job well done yeah so thank you mom all stations this is my mind ops all stations this is my monops standby for p.m hey guys this is the dev ops you can go ahead and execute ge stop deploy happy it's incredible to see you watching live footage of the mock the mission operations center it looks like we are very close to declaring victory on the uh the deployment of the sun shield yeah and i can confirm right or stop stand by congratulating the team downstairs many years in the making right here so uh not just uh not just for nasa all of our industry partners uh you know it's just an amazing achievements i just want to congratulate our sunshield team right now um what an achievement okay hey i just want to take a moment to congratulate everybody this is a really big moment we have a bunch of work front shield unbelievable after many years sorry about that since i don't normally talk uh we bring the mic down anyway so i said this is a really big moment i just want to congratulate the entire team we still got a lot of work to do but um but getting the sun shield out and deployed is really really big um if you constantly constantly reinforce what i tell everybody that the jwst team is the best in nasa there's hands down nobody better than what we have here you guys should all take pride in all these accomplishments um one of the things i've told folks i've been putting emails this is so unique what we do in this in this mission um we are going to be bonded forever by what we've experienced through not only just through operations with the mission ops team but over the last all those have worked on over 20 plus years and finally when i i'll just tell you what i put on facebook last night when i shared the story i just said the jvs team kicks butt i didn't use the word but i used another word but i won't use that word here congratulations everybody absolutely awesome so yeah this is uh you know we'll let our we'll let our celebrations continue this is incredible what an incredible week but folks like me are looking ahead right now i'm looking at deployment and uh can't wait to get that out so uh but uh congratulations to our entire team it's just awesome and just want to pass along some thanks to you know everybody viewing this everybody's been rooting us on all stations this is my lineup we're gonna hold right here for just a moment all the stations just hold right here for a second enjoy your moment and then we'll pick up with this as you said it's so wonderful to have all the people that are joining us around the world for this event uh this is truly incredible um when i first saw the design of the james webb space telescope and just the ambition of it and the size of it and the scale of it and this giant heat shield that needed to come out and so many things needed to work you know it took my breath away and uh i'm i'm here i'm actually getting goosebumps i mean this is this is a wonderful wonderful time how are you feeling uh keith oh yeah it's just uh like i said my my half my mind is going woohoo and then the half of my mind's going let's get that you know we gotta get that secondary around so that's just how my mind works but that's good that's good but uh no this is really good i mean and webb is absolutely hopefully everybody is becoming iconic a little bit it is absolutely a beautiful spacecraft um we did not design it to be beautiful we designed it to be functional uh but as a as a fact of making it functional it's absolutely a stunning spacecraft i did get to spend a few minutes with it in the clean room before we shipped it down to launch and i just i was just amazed that just how beautiful of a machine it is so and that machine is really a function of hand built by by by this team so uh so a salute to that absolutely wonderful so to confirm uh keith we we we we have final confirmation that the heat shield is entirely extended and tensioned we're we're gonna jump back into the cast here and continue with the coolest thing in space there is nothing cooler in space than jwst that's a fact so uh oh see this is i love that the coolest thing in space [Laughter] as you can tell even though we uh finish this up we're going to move on to this evening's activities right off the bat so we have some more uh thing 24-hour operation there and we're concerned so um at 66.021 that bleed has confirmed that the membrane tensioning is complete so this time we're ready to continue with 666.022 d eu to standby what's going on what's going on now is uh uh we're going to start shutting down or reconfiguring our electronics and turning off our motors and basically tell our electronics that have been driving these deployments that their job is done uh thank you very much you did your job and now you get to move on to your next thing uh so that's what they're doing right now they're just basically shutting things down uh and getting configured for the next operation so you may hear some of that well just many congratulations keith this is just just incredible so um you hear about the preparations oh let's oh sorry we didn't mean to step on you you you heard about the definitions oh i'm sorry i keep stepping i you know just want to thank you guys for putting these productions together this is awesome we're ready to continue with 666.023 and that flock looks good you're going to continue or go to execute executing okay so as keith just said uh they are uh they're getting ready to uh to do the next things that will happen and uh and please note that we will be bringing you live coverage of these other major deployments so the uh the next one i believe will be the uh the secondary mirror and uh i don't know exactly the schedule of these yet that depends on what the engineers decide to do but we'll have updates with that and you're gonna have uh and then the deployment of the full primary mirror as well so that these things are coming up later in the week just listening to what's what they're saying at the mock so seeing as we have a little bit of a pause for the mission operation center i'm i'm going to i'm going to wrap this up now uh because i think this is a wonderful chance to say thank you so much for everybody uh keith parish thank you so much for watching all of the amazing explanations you've given us and this is a historic day the first major phase of the the commissioning the deployment of the sun shield is complete and successful and i'm very excited so thank you so much for joining us and thank you sunshield team and go web go go web absolutely thank you for joining us please please join us again later in the week goodbye [Music] you

Channel: NASA

Views: 2,789,676

Keywords:

Id: IBPNi7uGgWM

Length: 152min 39sec (9159 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 04 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/SuperGolem_HEAL]

Layer 4 fully tensioned!

Seems like this deployment has went as smoothly as they could hope - they mentioned on the live stream they almost had to hold the team back, they didn't expect more than the first layer on day 1.

Would love these streams for all the steps!

[u/JimCripe]

Layer 4 fully tensioned at 10:23 EST!

[u/honeysbees]

I was just going to post this

[u/idbihogawidtl]

Where can we watch the live footage from the telescope? (joking)

[u/fyxr]

That man is playing Galaga

[u/fyxr]

All layers tensioned!

[u/fyxr]

Great to have a look into the control room, but there's a bit too much chit chat for my taste. It's not a radio show, we don't mind some dead air. Stay focused on the task at hand!

[u/My_new_spam_account]

The Offical NASA position on cameras (From Keith Parrish,Webb Commissioning Manager): We would have loved to put cameras on there to watch this happening but we couldn't find cameras that would work in the temperature environment needed, and we couldn't afford to have any more heat emitting equipment on the cold side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPNi7uGgWM&t=1507s

Not a single mention of "Cameras wouldn't be useful, the existing sensors are better", nothing about lack of power. The speculation on here about this has been so single minded. It's nice to hear from the horse's mouth.

Yes, cameras would have been fitted if a camera that met those criteria existed and they would prefer that cameras were fitted.

Edit: Fixed aggressive wording, which was, of course, completely unnecessary

Edit 2: Added link to exact section of sunshield tensioning broadcast where the camera issues is addressed.

[u/therealbenji]

Does anyone else find the host lady absolutely insufferable? I almost feel sorry for her, it's like you know that genuine emotions actually exist, right?