The James Webb Space Telescope has been on the brink of failure for two weeks now. It all started on December 7, at which time the space observatory crashes began due to software problems in the attitude control system.. But what exactly does it do? Well, no more and no less than the direction of view of the telescope. This has been confirmed by NASA.
During these crashes, James Webb went into safe mode. Thus, the secondary systems of the telescope stopped working, and internal problems were solved. Luckily, this internal instrument of the telescope allows only the main systems to remain operationalso failure didn’t mean vacation for him.
On December 20, after a hard struggle, the telescope team managed to fix the problem. A) Yes, James Webb back to normal. However, it wasn’t until December 21 that NASA decided to notify the rest of the community of the problems that arose at Lagrange’s L2 point, the home of James Webb.
The observatory and instruments are in good condition and have not been compromised, while the fault management system aboard Webb worked as intended to keep the equipment safe. The team is working to migrate the affected observations.
POT
“James Webb” will run into more problems than we’d like…but that’s okay.
James Webb is not the first time we are displeased. In previous cases, we have already been notified about your mirrors full of dust, and an even larger than expected meteorite hit him in the past, damaging its structure. However, we don’t seem to have anything to worry about.
It is important to note that this kind of technical problem is quite common in complex space missions. The Hubble Space Telescope, which has been operating for more than three decades, has had to overcome many challenges in its history. Meanwhile James Webb The construction cost was about $10,000 million.So the concern is understandable.
Despite these setbacks, NASA ensures that James Webb and his instruments are in good condition. In a statement, they comment that there was no danger at the time of the accident thanks to the onboard problem management system. The latter fulfilled its role as it should be in protecting the hardware of the telescope..
Meanwhile, NASA working on rescheduling scientific observations that were interrupted due to a problem. After all, a two-week window represents a significant loss. Let’s hope James Webb remains active for many more decades to offer us new kinds of impressive structures that abound in the vacuum of space.
Source: Hiper Textual
