The James Webb Space Telescope to sail past the Moon today

The James Webb Space Telescope is set to pass the Moon today. Credit: NASA.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will sail past the Moon today after completing two important events over the weekend.

On Saturday 12 1/2 hours after launch, the James Webb Space Telescope started a 65 minute mid-course correction burn. NASA says that “this burn is one of two milestones that are time critical — the first was the solar array deployment, which happened shortly after launch.”

Then on Sunday a little after 10:00 a.m. EST the automated process of releasing the gimbaled antenna assembly (GAA) began as illustrated below.

In a JWST status update NASA stated that the “antenna will be used to send at least 28.6 Gbytes of science data down from the observatory, twice a day. The team has now released and tested the motion of the antenna assembly — the entire process took about one hour.”

“Separately, overnight, the temperature sensors and strain gauges on the telescope were activated for the first time. Temperature and strain data are now available to engineers monitoring Webb’s thermal and structural systems.”

Animation of the Gimbaled Antenna Assembly (GAA) being deployed. Credit: NASA.

A deep dive into the JWST mid-course corrections

NASA provided the following in-depth update on the mid-course corrections today.

“On Dec. 25, the Webb team successfully executed the first of three planned orbit corrections to get Webb into its halo orbit around the second Lagrange point, L2. To hear more about these important maneuvers, here is Randy Kimble, the Webb Integration, Test, and Commissioning Project Scientist, at NASA Goddard:”

In sending the Webb Observatory into its orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point, the vast majority of the energy required was provided by the Ariane 5 rocket. After release of the observatory from the rocket, several small tweaks to the trajectory are planned, to ease the observatory into its operating orbit about one month after launch.

Webb’s orbit is around L2—a point of gravitational balance on the other side of Earth from the Sun—but it does not reside exactly at the L2 point. Right at that point, Earth’s shadowing of the Sun would be large enough to greatly reduce the amount of power available for Webb’s solar arrays, without greatly simplifying the cooling challenges. In addition, when Webb’s communication antennas point at Earth to receive commands, they would be blinded by the huge radio emission of the Sun in the same direction. Instead, as the diagram indicates, Webb operates in a very loose orbit (many hundreds of thousands of km in diameter) around L2, in constant sunlight and with clean communications with the ground stations. Credit:  NASA
Webb’s orbit is around L2—a point of gravitational balance on the other side of Earth from the Sun—but it does not reside exactly at the L2 point. Right at that point, Earth’s shadowing of the Sun would be large enough to greatly reduce the amount of power available for Webb’s solar arrays, without greatly simplifying the cooling challenges. In addition, when Webb’s communication antennas point at Earth to receive commands, they would be blinded by the huge radio emission of the Sun in the same direction. Instead, as the diagram indicates, Webb operates in a very loose orbit (many hundreds of thousands of km in diameter) around L2, in constant sunlight and with clean communications with the ground stations. Credit:  NASA

The largest and most important mid-course correction (MCC), designated MCC-1a, has already been successfully executed as planned, beginning 12.5 hours after launch. This time was chosen because the earlier the course correction is made, the less propellant it requires. This leaves as much remaining fuel as possible for Webb’s ordinary operations over its lifetime: station-keeping (small adjustments to keep Webb in its desired orbit) and momentum unloading (to counteract the effects of solar radiation pressure on the huge sunshield).

The burn wasn’t scheduled immediately after launch to give time for the flight dynamics team to receive tracking data from three ground stations, widely separated over the surface of the Earth, thus providing high accuracy for their determination of Webb’s position and velocity, necessary to determine the precise parameters for the correction burn. Ground stations in Malindi Kenya, Canberra Australia, and Madrid Spain provided the necessary ranging data.  There was also time to do a test firing of the required thruster before executing the actual burn. We are currently doing the analysis to determine just how much more correction of Webb’s trajectory will be needed, and how much fuel will be left, but we already know that the Ariane 5’s placement of Webb was better than requirements.

One interesting aspect of the Webb launch and the Mid-Course Corrections is that we always “aim a little bit low.” The L2 point and Webb’s loose orbit around it are only semi-stable. In the radial direction (along the Sun-Earth line), there is an equilibrium point where in principle it would take no thrust to remain in position; however, that point is not stable. If Webb drifted a little bit toward Earth, it would continue (in the absence of corrective thrust) to drift ever closer; if it drifted a little bit away from Earth, it would continue to drift farther away. Webb has thrusters only on the warm, Sun-facing side of the observatory. We would not want the hot thrusters to contaminate the cold side of the observatory with unwanted heat or with rocket exhaust that could condense on the cold optics. This means the thrusters can only push Webb away from the Sun, not back toward the Sun (and Earth). We thus design the launch insertion and the MCCs to always keep us on the uphill side of the gravitational potential,  we never want to go over the crest – and drift away downhill on the other side, with no ability to come back.

Therefore, the Ariane 5 launch insertion was intentionally designed to leave some velocity in the anti-Sun direction to be provided by the payload. MCC-1a similarly was executed to take out most, but not all, of the total required correction (to be sure that this burn also would not overshoot). In the same way, MCC-1b, scheduled for 2.5 days after launch, and MCC-2, scheduled for about 29 days after launch (but neither time-critical), and the station-keeping burns throughout the mission lifetime will always thrust just enough to leave us a little bit shy of the crest. We want Sisyphus to keep rolling this rock up the gentle slope near the top of the hill – we never want it to roll over the crest and get away from him. The Webb team’s job, guided by the Flight Dynamics Facility at NASA Goddard, is to make sure it doesn’t.

About Marc Boucher

Boucher is an entrepreneur, writer, editor & publisher. He is the founder of SpaceQ Media Inc. and CEO and co-founder of SpaceRef Interactive LLC. Boucher has 20+ years working in various roles in the space industry and a total of 30 years as a technology entrepreneur including creating Maple Square, Canada's first internet directory and search engine.

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