A Nasa started this Tuesday (28) afternoon, one of the most delicate operations in the commissioning of the space telescope James Webb (JWST): The deployment of his delicate sun shield.
The first step was the relocation of two structures, called the front and rear “Unified Palette Structure”, which contain the five carefully folded shield membranes, plus cables, pulleys and release mechanisms.
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The team completed the process at approximately 3:21 pm (Brasília time), after four hours of work. The next step is to release the rear frame.
Today’s operation kicks off what will be at least another five days of steps needed to deploy the sun shield – a process on which mission success depends. If the shield is not in place to keep Webb’s telescope and instruments extremely cool, close to absolute zero, Webb will be unable to observe the universe as it was designed.
As next stages include extending a collapsible tower, followed by releasing the sunscreen covers, extending the intermediate bars, and finally tensioning the five layers of Kapton that make up the sunshield itself.
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As shield deployment will be one of the most challenging processes NASA has ever attempted, the mission operations team has added flexibility to the timeline so that the schedule and even the sequence of next steps may change in the coming days as required.
released Last Saturday (25), James Webb is undergoing a delicate process of testing and preparation for operation, called commissioning, as he navigates through space on his way to his destination, an orbit close to Lagrange Point 2 (L2) in the system formed by the Earth and the Sun. In all, NASA estimates that it will take six months of preparation before scientific observations can begin.
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