Question: What type of orbit placement has been planned by the NASA for recently launched James Webb Telescope?
a) LEO
b) L2
c) Geo-synchronous
d) None of these
Answer: (b)
Related Facts:-
- On 08 January 2022; the golden reflector, the centerpiece mirror of James Webb telescope deployed fully as it completely unfolded its full, 6.5m-wide, concave shape.
- It should be noted that the two wings of Webb’s primary mirror had been folded to fit inside the nose cone of an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket prior to launch.
- After more than a week of other critical spacecraft deployments, the Webb team began remotely unfolding the hexagonal segments of the primary mirror.
- This was a multi-day process, with the first side and the second side deployed on January 07 and 08 , 2021 respectively.
- The world’s largest and most complex space science telescope will now begin moving its 18 primary mirror segments to align the telescope optics.
- The ground team will command 126 actuators on the backsides of the segments to flex each mirror – an alignment that will take months to complete.
- Then the team will calibrate the science instruments prior to delivering Webb’s first images by the summer in 2022.
- Now Webb will also undergo a third mid-course correction burn – one of three planned to place the telescope precisely in the orbit.
- Scientists and their team at NASA has already decided the precise orbit for Webb around the second Lagrange point( commonly known as L2)
- L2 is nearly 1 million miles from Earth and this is the Webb’s final orbital position.
- It is the position where its sunshield will protect it from light from the Sun, Earth, and Moon that could interfere with observations of infrared light.
- James Webb, one of the most advanced telescope ever made by humans, is designed to peer back over 13.5 billion years into the space.
- It is able to capture infrared light from celestial objects, with much higher resolution, and to study our own solar system as well as distant worlds.
- Gregory L. Robinson, Webb program director at NASA said that the successful completion of all of the Webb Space Telescope’s deployments is an historic achievement.
- He said that this is the first time a NASA-led mission has ever attempted to complete a complex sequence to unfold an observatory in space.
By Rajesh Tripathi
Links:-
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-webb-telescope-reaches-major-milestone-as-mirror-unfolds