[HN Gopher] JWST Launch NASA Livestream
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       JWST Launch NASA Livestream
        
       Author : grecy
       Score  : 138 points
       Date   : 2021-12-25 10:30 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | ravisutrave wrote:
       | "Webb will soon begin an approximately two-week process to deploy
       | its antennas, mirrors, and sunshield."
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1474724928360525827
        
       | magicalhippo wrote:
       | Anyone know why the trajectory dipped down during the second
       | stage? To gain extra orbital velocity or something? Been too long
       | since I played Kerbal Space Program.
        
         | Sosh101 wrote:
         | Yeah I guess it was something like a partial slingshot?
        
       | instagraham wrote:
       | I wonder what the Eye of God will look like through this
       | telescope. It's much farther out than Hubble.
        
         | chinathrow wrote:
         | I had to look this one up -
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_Nebula
        
       | ryzvonusef wrote:
       | launch looks good!
        
         | ryzvonusef wrote:
         | https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html
        
       | perihelions wrote:
       | 32 minute launch window starting at 12:20 UTC (07:20 EST). When
       | this comment's indicated age is ~30 minutes.
       | 
       | https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2021/12/21/james-webb-space-tele...
        
         | Jellyspice wrote:
         | Countdown page
         | https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/countdown.html
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | junon wrote:
       | Either going to be a huge, incredible, historic event, or a
       | massive Christmas Day tragedy. Hoping for the former - good luck
       | NASA!
       | 
       | E: Wow, the coverage about the hurricane causing leaks in the
       | buildings is wild. The pictures of tarps over computer desks
       | makes me unreasonably uncomfortable.
        
         | 1_player wrote:
         | My hope is that if it's the latter, building a new JWST from
         | scratch will not take as much time and money as designing the
         | first prototype did. I hope they have kept really good notes
         | and backups :-)
        
         | jacquesm wrote:
         | It worked!
        
       | dredmorbius wrote:
       | Good launch.
       | 
       | And over 472k viewers on the livestream. Good service by YouTube.
       | 
       | (I don't get to praise them often, credit where due.)
       | 
       | All launch events seemed precisely on schedule and trajectory.
       | 
       | The 2nd stage even caught the solar panel deploy on camera, which
       | I believe was an unexpected bonus.
       | 
       | Now we've got 30 days of deployment events, another 300 or so
       | SPOFs to clear. Arrival at L2 in a month.
       | 
       | Six months to chill and calibrate (with or without Netflix I'm
       | not sure).
       | 
       | Science starts in June.
        
         | jacquesm wrote:
         | > 472k viewers on the livestream
         | 
         | We had about 11K on STS 82, which I still think was the high
         | point of my career. Back in the day with capacity being what it
         | was that put a serious strain on the internet as a whole,
         | shortly after that we had to move to the other side of the
         | Atlantic be able to continue to operate.
        
           | shireboy wrote:
           | Great anecdote!
        
             | jacquesm wrote:
             | https://twitter.com/jmattheij/status/1474767067236777991
        
         | kurthr wrote:
         | I was a little disappointed, because I'd watched the animation
         | last night.
         | 
         | The only differences were in the first 4 seconds (before it hit
         | the clouds) and after the spring launch, when we caught the
         | solar panel deploy in the sun with earth below from the 2nd
         | stage. At least everything went as planned!
         | 
         | I was surprised at the timeline and how rapidly it slows before
         | reaching the L2 orbit. It's already fallen from 4mps to 1.7mps
         | in the first few hours. Even though it takes 30 days to reach
         | L2, it will be 30% of the way there in the first day.
         | 
         | https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html
        
       | kingofpandora wrote:
       | From the broadcast: "Liftoff from a tropical rain forest at the
       | edge of time itself."
       | 
       | What does that mean?
        
         | sjburt wrote:
         | It was "to the edge of time itself" which I guess is some kind
         | of reference to the telescope being able to observe the early
         | universe? It seemed kind of cheesy.
        
         | jacquesm wrote:
         | It is 'to the edge of time' and what they mean with it is that
         | the JWST can look very far back into our past to the earliest
         | days of the universe with its instruments that are capable of
         | observing severely red-shifted wavelengths.
        
         | 95014_refugee wrote:
         | It means that someone was paid to talk, because radio dies
         | hard.
         | 
         | The idea that commentary should be informative and that content
         | can speak for itself is (still) deeply threatening to many
         | folks in the broadcast industry. See any sports broadcast for
         | examples.
        
       | nabla9 wrote:
       | Super exiting.
       | 
       | * JWST costs ~$10B, about the same as Large Hadron Collider or
       | aircraft carrier.
       | 
       | * JWST has 344 single-point-of-failures (SPOF), 80% of them
       | related to deployment.
       | 
       | * No ability for repair. JWST goes to orbit the Sun 1.5 million
       | kilometers away from the Earth, almost 4 times the distance
       | between Earth and Moon.
       | 
       | * Ariane 5 launch failure rate is 0.045
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | assuming 0.045 launch failure probability, and 0.0001 failure
       | probability for each SPOF, the mission failure probability is
       | ~8%.                 0.955x(1-0.0001)^344
        
         | efitz wrote:
         | I'm much more concerned about what will happen once the
         | telescope is in operation. We can't send astronauts to L2 to
         | fix it like we could send them to Hubble on STS.
        
           | pfdietz wrote:
           | We can't yet, but doing so isn't entirely out of the
           | question. It's easier than sending anyone to Mars. The one-
           | way trip time for astronauts to L2 might be 25 days.
           | 
           | https://www.wired.com/2012/04/100-day-mission-to-sun-
           | earth-l...
        
             | api wrote:
             | JWST apparently does have some kind of docking attachment
             | so we can service it if we get the capability between now
             | and EOL. Servicing once could likely double its useful
             | life. Starship and Orion could do it AFAIK. Maybe Dragon
             | with a service module.
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | The docking attachment was originally planned but there's
               | been no mention of it in the last 10 years or so and no
               | pictures of such an attachment point. They probably de-
               | scoped it.
        
               | redisman wrote:
               | I'm guessing they can't service it by adding more fuel?
               | That would've been a neat expansion to be able to expand
               | its life
        
         | wiz21c wrote:
         | This makes a 92% success rate... I'm not sure I would cross a
         | road if I had that much chance to be hit by a car :-)
        
         | guerrilla wrote:
         | > 0.0001 failure probability for each SPOF
         | 
         | Why did you choose this value for the assumption? Is that
         | standard or a publicized detail?
        
           | nabla9 wrote:
           | I picked relatively high number 1/10000 as a starting point
           | to get a ballpark. NASA has never tested deployment in the
           | zero gravity. It's unlikely that the probability is higher.
           | 
           | Ariane launch failure probability dominates if you add zeros.
           | 0.00001  -> 4.8%        0.000001 -> 4.5%
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | Why there's no "narration"? Looks like nasa tv employees are out
       | on holidays?
        
         | guerrilla wrote:
         | The event hadn't started when you looked. Check now.
        
       | Symbiote wrote:
       | Additional comments on the ESA livestream (posted a few minutes
       | before this one): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29681636
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-25 23:01 UTC)