December 25, 2021

Ariane 5 Launches NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (Source: Space News)
A space telescope that will peer deeper into the universe than any other is on its way to its destination beyond the moon after a long-anticipated launch Dec. 25. An Ariane 5 lifted off from the European spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, at 7:20 a.m. Eastern. The James Webb Space Telescope separated from the rocket’s upper stage 27 minutes after launch. Controllers confirmed that, minutes later, the 6,160-kilogram spacecraft deployed its solar array, the first in a long series of deployments for JWST. The solar array was one of the most critical ones, allowing the spacecraft to generate power. (12/25)

Why Will it Take Six Months to See JWST's First Science Images? (Source: Planetary Society)
JWST is big! The main mirror, made up of 18 hexagonal mirror segments, is 6.5 meters (21 feet) wide, a hefty increase over the 2.4 meters of the Hubble Space Telescope. And the sunshield that protects JWST’s mirrors from the warmth of the Sun, Earth, and Moon is even larger: 22 by 10 meters – comparable in size to a regulation tennis court. To fit inside the rocket fairing (the compartment that will hold JWST as it is launched), both the mirror and the sunshield were folded up in a complex pattern of space origami.

More importantly, both the mirror and sunshield must unfold successfully after launch for JWST to become fully functional. JWST’s destination is the Earth-Sun Lagrange 2 point. After launch, it will take 29 days for the telescope to reach L2, and that month is characterized by NASA as “29 days on the edge.” During this month, JWST will go through a carefully choreographed sequence of “deployments” of its major structural components: unfurling its solar panels, deploying an antenna, and then beginning the slow process of sunshield deployment. After the sunshield is in place, the secondary mirror swings into place, and the wings of the primary mirror fold out.

The teams will initiate and monitor more than 300 unique activities, resulting in 50 major deployments involving 178 mechanisms. A failure of even one mechanism means a non-functioning telescope. They have back-up plans, as well as back-up plans to the back-up plans. By the time JWST arrives at L2, it will be fully deployed and ready to start the next phase of preparations: commissioning. Commissioning first includes aligning all of the segments of the primary mirror, so they function as one perfectly focused telescope (telescope commissioning). Second, the JWST Science Instrument teams must test and calibrate each of the many modes of the four science instruments on board (science instrument commissioning). (12/22)

Space Force Issues $32 Million Contract for Prototype Space-Based Sensor (Source: C4ISRnet)
The U.S. Space Force has awarded GEOST a $32 million contract modification for prototype space domain awareness payloads which will be hosted on a number of different satellites. The contract modification is part of a Space Force effort to host small, low-cost sensors on a number of different satellites — owned by either the U.S. government or international partners — in geosynchronous orbit, augmenting the service’s ability to understand what is going on in space. (12/23)

Russia Aborts Launch Attempt for Third and Final Angara A5 Demonstration Mission (Source: NasaSpaceFlight.com)
Russia made an attempt to launch the third and final demonstration flight of the Angara A5 rocket on Friday, December 24 at approximately 15:00 UTC. However, an automated abort was triggered one and a half minutes before liftoff due to a ground systems malfunction. The next launch attempt can be made no earlier than Monday, December 27.

Angara is being developed and built by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center and is intended to replace several existing launch vehicles. Angara will attempt to place its 2,400 kg mass simulator in a near geostationary orbit (GEO) using a new Persei upper stage. After a few hours, the Persei upper stage will perform two burns to place the payload in a graveyard orbit, a few hundred kilometers above GEO. (12/24)

The Space Station Race (Source: Vox)
While new commercial and government stations will make it easier for more humans to visit space, they’re also bound to create new political and economic tensions. At that point, anyone hoping to work in space will have to choose among several different outposts. That means countries won’t just be using these new stations to strengthen their own national space programs, but as lucrative business ventures, too. The nascent space station race isn’t quite a return to the Cold War, but it’s not the pinnacle of internationalism, either. In the best of scenarios, these new stations will learn from each other and massively expand scientific knowledge.

But they will also make global politics a much bigger part of space, which could impact what happens here on Earth and how humanity explores the moon and Mars. These companies have committed, however, to finding enough business to support their operations. Millions of dollars of their seed funding from NASA is devoted to developing marketing plans, according to contracts with the agency that Recode accessed through a public records request. While Blue Origin has said NASA and its partners will serve as its primary customer for research, the StarLab station will only depend on NASA for 30 percent of its revenue during its first decade. (12/25)