Space Exploration - James Webb Telescope / Mars Rovers, etc

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BTW- unfurl is such a weird world.
Nothing ever "furls". It only un-furls.
There can be no furling, once an ufurl has taken place...or the universe would furl in on itself.

*shiver*
 
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Yeah thinking about the universe is kind of scary. Like the reality of it always being there, when the reality of that hits me it creeps me out. And if there is one there are probably others and what do they look like? I picture a boiling sea of them and what would be outside of that?

One of those things that the more you picture and think about it the scarier it gets. Like when my kid asked me if the galaxy was swirling down a drain when looking at images in a book. I was like "No, that's... Well let's go with another picture book." :laugh4:
 
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I can't wait to see what comes from this. Apparently, it has taken twice as long as expected and went from $500,000,000 to over a billion. Glad they are going to get it done.
 
I can't wait to see what comes from this. Apparently, it has taken twice as long as expected and went from $500,000,000 to over a billion. Glad they are going to get it done.
In the video Merlin posted, 10 billion dollars was mentioned.
 
Super cool, I still have a home built light bucket and a couple other telescopes. I haven't even dusted them off in years. Thanks for sharing, very interesting stuff
 
In the video Merlin posted, 10 billion dollars was mentioned.

It is crazy!

So much could go wrong. So much could STILL go wrong.

I watched this one last night, covers the engineering involved. Incredible what they are able to calculate and predict.

The engineering that has gone into the unfolding of the shield alone… it all goes to waste if they can’t do that right.

Then… the potential impact of space debris. So many things need to come into place for this to work.


View: https://youtu.be/aICaAEXDJQQ
 
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What's crazy is the fact it's supposed to be 100X more powerful than the Hubble, which has gotten some insane photos like the deep Hubble field pic of all those galaxies. Couple that with the fact it's WAY out in space, and yeah, there are going to be some INSANE photos. I also can't wait.
 
Pictures are already coming in.













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This is a nice status page;


Sounds like they are deploying shields currently;

Sunshield Layer Tensioning​

Nominal Event Time: Launch + 7 days
This operation is a multi-step two-day activity which completes the final membrane releases, as well as tensioning the five layers of the sunshield.

After initial sunshield deployments of the forward and aft UPS (which carry the fully folded sunshield), followed by the port and starboard mid-booms (which support and initially unfold all 5 layers of the sunshield together), each layer is successively tensioned.