Re:James Webb is fully deployed
by weaksauce on Saturday January 08, 2022 @07:47PM
(#29858489)
the plan as i understand it is to have a drone refuel it after about 10 years or so... that might have a camera on it perhaps?
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I thought there were no plans for any refuel or repair mission.
There are no plans at the moment because it is not even clear how long will current fuel supply last. NASA engineer today said "maybe 20 years, roughly speaking", my back-of-napkin math says that it could be up to 30 if everything goes great. It will depend on exact schedule of observations, number of unexpected transient observations and solar activity. Computer simulations of its orbit and solar wind pressure have some error bars that will be corrected once we get solid data. It also has funding for only 5 years of ground operations right now. Once the mission get extended and we have solid understanding of how it behaves in space we could think of designing refuelling mission. It has fuel port so it is possible in principle, but I don't expect any concrete plans within 10 years.
Re:James Webb is fully deployed
by Ostrogodsky on Saturday January 08, 2022 @08:45PM
(#29858944)
Yeah, I think that will depend on the scientific quality of the observations provided by JWST:
- Hubble/COBE level. Refuel it!
- LHC level: Meh, let it rot.
Tbf it is less about the device (and the people working on it) and more about what kind of fundamental changes to our understanding of the universe is provided by its observations. BTW I am pretty bullish on that front.