The James Webb telescope is a NASA space telescope created to be the successor of the Hubble telescope. It is set to launch in 2021. It is essential for the James Webb telescope to remain within cold temperatures, as this is the most optimized way to capture infrared light, so NASA engineers created a five-layered sunshield that protects the James Webb telescope from light and heat from the sun. Recently, these engineers and technicians successfully put the sunshield on the telescope, marking the first time it had been deployed and tensioned by the spacecraft electronics.
To create the sunshield, the NASA scientists created each of the five layers with Kapton, a polyimide film that remains stable at extremely hot and extremely cold temperatures. They also coated each layer with vapor-deposited aluminum as a way of reflecting the heat from the Sun back into space. Additionally, the two layers closest to the sun were coated with a doped silicon in order to protect the sunshield and the telescope from the ultraviolet radiation of the sun. The sunshield was also created to be extremely large, in order to protect the grandiose of the telescope, but also be able to fold into a 16-foot diameter rocket payload fairing when launched. The article did not specifically state so, but to test the deployment of the sunshield, the engineers and technicians had to do a lot of manual tensioning. Here is a video of that process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVAe9Ovca5Q
The deployment of this sunshield, along with the creation of the sunshield and the telescope, have pretty big implications on our society. With this successful test, NASA is pretty much ready to launch their telescope, which has the potential to get pictures of some of the first stars and galaxies to have formed after the Big Bang. This would give us a more wider scope of knowledge when it comes to our universe, and could open up new fields of interstellar study.
This article relates to my JPL project because, like the NASA engineers and technicians, we need to test to make sure our project is working before the actual competition. My team is working together quite well: we all have tasks to complete each day, and we complete them. And albeit a bit slower than preferred, we are getting along with finishing our project. We've created our circle that holds our arm, we've cut the supports for the axle/arms/trebuchet, and we've begun to construct the base.
That concludes this brief, but educational, blog post. Thank you for your time. If you would like to contact me, my social media, email, and phone number are all located on this website. Ok time to sleep :)
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