Non-motoring > Dents in the $10Bn James Webb telescope Miscellaneous
Thread Author: henry k Replies: 4
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New Thu 21 Jul 22 09:01 
 Dents in the $10Bn James Webb telescope - henry k
news.sky.com/story/meteoroid-hit-has-caused-significant-uncorrectable-damage-to-james-webb-space-telescope-12655489

That really is unlucky so early in its life.
Maybe some electronic buffing out will sort some of it?

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New Thu 21 Jul 22 12:34 
 Dents in the $10Bn James Webb telescope - Manatee
"Another potential method to mitigate the strikes could involve minimising the amount of time that the JWST spent "looking in the direction of orbital motion, which statistically has higher micrometeoroid rates and energies".

And the front of a car receives many times more bug impacts and with more force than the sides or the rear. Rocket science it ain't.
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New Thu 21 Jul 22 13:19 
 Dents in the $10Bn James Webb telescope - Dog
It's only 1 million miles away, which is nothing really compared to say Mars at c140 million miles.

Maybe they could fold the mirrors up, return it to Earth's orbit, and get some Virgil type from the ISS to fix it.

The 'scope has a 20-year lifetime, so it doesn't have to be done in the next few years or so.
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New Thu 21 Jul 22 13:56 
 Dents in the $10Bn James Webb telescope - Manatee
I don't think it can motor back - it's basically ballistic although it does have engines that are used for station keeping and orientation that will run out of fuel sometime after 5-10 years.

It orbits Lagrange point L2 about a million miles outside earth orbit which which means it basically stays put relative to earth and the fuel required to maintain its orbit is minimal. The quantity of fuel needed to return to earth orbit would presumably be much greater even supposing the engines could do it. I think it has something like 100-200Kg of rocket fuel and oxidant on board.
Last edited by: Manatee on Thu 21 Jul 22 at 13:57
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New Thu 21 Jul 22 20:33 
 Dents in the $10Bn James Webb telescope - smokie
It hides from the Sun behind the Earth, as well as under 5 layers of heat reflective stuff, as if it was out on its own it would be fried pdq.

When the satellite was freed from it's transport the opening of the heat reflective canopy appeared to have gone wrong, in that it didn't trigger the switches to confirm it had deployed, and the initial thought was that it hadn't. But one of the rocket scientists pointed out after a minute that if it hadn't. it wouldn't have still been there.

So even if it could technically redirect itself it wouldn't survive.
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