Subj : Re: The James Webb Space Telescope
To   : All
From : Wilfred van Velzen
Date : Sun Dec 26 2021 13:35:05

* Originally in CHAT
* Crossposted in ASTRONOMY
* Crossposted in ASTRONET

Hi All,

On 2021-12-25 15:24:15, I wrote to August Abolins:

 WvV> Btw: It's now already way past (@48km's) the orbit of geostationairy
 WvV> satelites (which is about 35,7 km above the earths surface).

It's now, a day after launch, almost 240 km from earth. That's not even half way the distance to the moon. And about 16,5% of the distance to it's destination point in space. It will take about 29 days to get there. It will take so long to get there, because there is no propulsion anymore (except for some short burns for course corrections). It's in the balistic fase on it's path to it's destination, and because of the gravitational pull of the earth it's constantly slowing down slightly. It speed now is about 1.7 km/s relative to earth, while during the launch fase it topped at about 10 km/s...

If you're interested you can follow it's journey for yourself on this website:

https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html


Bye, Wilfred.

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