On the second day after the James Webb telescope passed the height of the moon, the engineers embarked on the most challenging task of the future-deploying the sun visor. As the observatory begins operation at the end of January, the five-layer shield will protect the equipment on the telescope from the heat generated by the sun, moon, and earth.
The mission was successfully deployed. The front and rear consisted of five protective covers about the size of three tennis courts. They were made of very thin Kapton material, about one to two thousandths of an inch thick, and only included 140 release mechanisms, 70 hinge components, 8 deployment motors, bearings, springs, gears, 400 pulleys, and a total length of 1,312 feet of cables. All of these must work perfectly to deploy the shield.
The engineers stated that for deployment, the 107 sunshade release mechanisms need to be fired according to the prompts to fully open the sunshade. That is 107.
“The unfolding of the pallet marks the beginning of the deployment of Weber’s main structures and the beginning of the sun visor deployment phase, which will last at least until this Sunday,” NASA said. Among them are Weber’s most unpredictable and complex tray structure component: sun visor. The tray contains five carefully folded sunshade films, as well as the cables, pulleys and release mechanisms that make up the Webb sunshade.
NASA updated in its blog that although the actual movement of lowering the front pallet from the resting position to the unfolded position took only 20 minutes, and the lowering of the rear pallet took only 18 minutes, the entire process required several Hours, because dozens of additional steps are required.
“Deploying these structures includes closely monitoring the temperature, manipulating the observatory to provide the optimal temperature, turning on the heater to heat key components, activating the release mechanism, configuring the electronics and software, and finally locking the tray in place,” NASA said.
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