WASHINGTON – NASA is taking a day off to deploy the James Webb Space Telescope after successfully expanding the spacecraft’s protective sleeve.
NASA said on January 1 that it would wait a day before starting the process of tightening the five-layer sun visor, finalizing it and making sure the layers were separated. This effort, which is now scheduled to begin on January 2, will take at least two days to complete.
The spacecraft manager added a pause in the deployment of sun visors after working late into the night of December 31 to expand the two “moderate explosion” structures on either side of the spacecraft. The mutation expands the sunscreen to its full size. This process starts late when the sensor indicates that the sun visor is not fully encased. The controller decided to continue boom deployment because other data, including from temperature sensors and gyroscopes, were consistent with removing the cover.
“The team did what we have trained in situations like this: pause, evaluate, and proceed systematically with a plan,” Keith Parrish, director of the JWST Observatory at Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a Dec. 31 statement. “We still have a long way to go in the whole deployment process.”
This sensor malfunction has been the only problem in the spacecraft’s deployment sequence since its launch on December 25. NASA noted in a statement that the deployment of sun visors relies on 107 membrane-removing devices, each of which must work with the sunscreen in order to stretch properly. The agency stated that 107 were successfully released.
And NASA says a day’s break in completing protective lift will likely push other activities back. Mounting the screws is the final step in completing the installation of the sun visor, after which the controller will direct their attention to the mounting of the telescope mirror. However, the one-day delay will have little long-term impact on the mission, which will take six months to complete the telescope and its instruments.
“Today is an example of why we keep saying we don’t believe our deployment schedule can change, but we expect it,” Parrish said in a Dec. 31 statement about boom spreads.
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