James Webb on track for October 2021 launch; final testing underway

by Chris Gebhardt

In a virtual update, NASA and Northrop Grumman confirmed the James Webb Space Telescope remains on track for launch on 31 October 2021 atop an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana.

Final pre-launch processing milestones with the telescope, meanwhile, continue at Northrop Grumman’s Redondo Beach, California, facility, with teams currently working toward shipment of the observatory to its South American launch site in August 2021.

“2020 has been a challenging year due to COVID,” said Greg Robinson, James Webb Space Telescope Program Director at NASA Headquarters.  “However, Webb has made significant progress regardless, and that’s because of a highly dedicated team.  And we don’t take that for granted.”

Recently completed milestones include the first-ever full observatory electrical test as well as the culmination of environmental, vibration, and acoustic testing to ensure the telescope will operate in the temperature realm it will be exposed to in space as well as survive the sound and vibrations that will be imparted to it by the Ariane 5 rocket.

At present, deployment tests are underway at Northrop Grumman’s California facility, with Scott Willoughby, Vice President & Program Manager, Northrop Grumman, noting that the sunshield will be completely deployed by the end of the year and that teams will have completed all deployment tests by spring 2021 and will then begin the delicate process of folding Webb back up — this time for launch.

Meanwhile, all of the equipment and preparations needed to ship the telescope by sea are underway, with 17 of those 26 milestones remaining.  “We’ll be ready for shipping much earlier than [its] planned [for],” said Bill Ochs, NASA James Webb Space Telescope Project Manager.  “We’ll then ship in August.  It’ll take us 12 days to get to the launch site.  Then there’s 55 days of launch site processing covering about 700 tasks.”

The Ariane 5 rocket which will place James Webb into its initial orbit is undergoing build and integration operations.  The payload fairings are currently being produced by RUAG and are scheduled to be completed by February 2021.

The Étage Supérieur Cryotechnique (Cryogenic Upper Stage) of the Ariane 5 rocket is currently undergoing electrical integration while technicians install the Vulcain 2 engine onto the Étage Principal Cryotechnique (Cryotechnic Main Stage).

Once launched, six key periods must be passed to formally start science operations:

  1. Launch and ascent
  2. Mid-course correction
  3. Deployments (2-3 weeks)
  4. Cooldown
  5. Telescope commissioning
  6. Science commissioning.

To ensure a smooth commissioning period, James Webb control teams are rehearsing all key aspects of the mission to fine tune their readiness should the telescope behave other than expected.

The James Webb launch and deployment timeline. (Credit: NASA Goddard)

“We completed our first launch readiness exercise, since COVID began, two weeks ago,” said Bill.  “We have seven full rehearsals remaining and several smaller ones with various groups.”

“These full up rehearsals start at various points.  The most recent one started at T-2 hours and went until the first course correction burn.  The next one, in February, will be sunshield deployment, tensioning, and science instrument commissioning.”

A key element of these rehearsals is making them as flight-like as possible, including time of day, shift changes, and technical issues.

“In terms of getting prepared, we have teams of folks whose job is to make those participating in the rehearsals as miserable as possible,” said Bill.

“They force the team to exercise their knowledge and problem solve.  They design these exercises to stress the team to make sure they’re ready.”

Part of this readiness is a pre-made “tool box” of contingency procedures the team can practice and have ready to implement if needed.

“This tool box covers everything from switching from one side of a control box to the other up to shimmying and shaking, spinning the telescope if something gets stuck and shaking it might get it to deploy,” added Bill.

“These simulations give us a chance to test procedures, react to issues, and then to debrief and have our lessons learned going forward.”

Once in operation, the James Webb Space Telescope will be an infrared observatory, capable of seeing back to some of the earliest moments in the universe while also looking at targets much closer to home — some in and around our solar system. 

An important distinction is that James Webb is not the replacement to the Hubble Space Telescope.  Rather, the two will work in coordination for as long as Hubble remains active — an uncertainty that grows with each passing day as no servicing mission is planned at this time. 

Equally important is the fact that James Webb will have capabilities that neither Hubble nor any other telescope in existence has, enabling it to perform observations of cold body objects in the distant regions of our solar system, sample and characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets in the surrounding galactic space, and also look back in time to the very first stars that birthed the metals and elements present on Earth today.

“[James Webb] will study how the first stars were very different from the stars around us today, because there were no metals that make up the stars of today,” said Massimo Stiavelli, Mission Head, Space Telescope Science Institute.  “Stars had to make those.  [James Webb] is the only telescope designed to study those early epochs.”

Payload fairing separation during James Webb’s launch. (Credit: ESA – D. Ducros)

Speaking of the telescope’s ability, Scott Willoughby added, “Humanity is building something that will go back in time 13.7 billion years to see how the stars of then made the stuff of today.  How did that happen?  We’re going to be able to tell people that.”

Eric Smith, NASA James Webb Space Telescope Program Scientist, continued, “This is the plot of our existence.  This is a telescope that will be used to answer the question of where we came from and how the universe of today formed.  And because of its exoplanet ability, Webb could seek the answer of ‘are we alone?’”.

“Webb is aimed right at the heart of the two questions we’ve been asking for centuries.”

James Webb is an international collaboration by NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

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