5 years seems like not a lot, although probably spoiled by most recent probes/rovers lasting past expected lifetimes. what do they think is expected service life for an orbiting satellite like that? is the plan to send another one after it in 10 years?
NASA is very conservative when estimating lifetimes of their missions, like Spirit and Opportunity which were planned 90 sol missions and ended up lasting 2,208 and 5,352 sols respectively. They’re already trying to figure out what kind of telescope to launch to follow up JWST, one of the concepts is basically JWST on steroids.
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As I mentioned before the lifespan could be extended by a lot more if we can program a robot well enough to dock with James Webb and provide either fuel or just the thrust it needs to stay orbiting at L2 in the right orientation. Assuming of course everything else works as expected. Its instruments would last a lot longer than the 5 to 10 years mentioned as the most limiting factor is that it needs functioning thrusters.
Other missions going way beyond their expected lifetime all don’t need thrusters and will keep working until their instruments fail or until their solar panels wear out if they are not nuclear powered. Voyager showed that can take a very long time.
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all those concept telescopes are proposed for 2035 and beyond. i guess they are reasonably confident JWST will last or get renewed by then.
it’s interesting that jwst needs thrusters to be able to change position every so often. like it’s always trying to focus on a dot so precisely, it sacrifices a tiny bit of orbit stability to achieve it. it also spends thrusters if it wants to look at something new. so in theory the space geeks could choose to not swing it around so dramatically that it runs out of orbit, and extend service life that way.
i don’t think refueling jwst is possible, since that’s an additional feature to design, but because the mission to refuel would be just as hard as launching a completely new satellite with better instruments up there, and in a few years presumably it would get more bang for the dollar.
James Webb has a docking ring specifically added to allow refuelling. It is also possible to not actually refuel but to dock a small spacecraft that then uses its own thrusters and fuel to keep Web oriented correctly. This would massively extend the lifespan but the docking needs to be fully automated. A small craft with just fuel and thrusters is also a lot cheaper then an entire new telescope. It would also be the proof of concept that we can service something this far away from earth so I expect we will at least attempt it as it opens up other more complex missions.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if a private space company develops some kind of simple probe that’s basically just a big-ass fuel tank with a rocket motor that can attach itself to that docking ring in the next few years and pitches it to NASA basically at cost.
I agree. The moment JWST is fullly operational people are going to pitch a refuelling mission to NASA. It is just a great proof of concept mission that would get lots of attention especially if JWST returns pictures that inspire like Hubble.
Biden-Harris Administration Extends Space Station Operations Through 2030
At least 8 more years of US ISS support.
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https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/01/07/first-of-two-primary-mirror-wings-unfolds/
One mirror wing left to deploy.
How many points of failure are we down to?
86 more by my math.
I’m starting to get my hopes up now. I just don’t want another Hubble. I remember how disappointed I was when the first pics came back blurry.
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Yeah I guess the final single point of failure is “picture comes back in focus”.
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There are adjustment motors behind all of the mirror segments so as long as those all work they should be able to avoid a Hubble repeat.
So I watched few scenes from “Dont look up again” and when they had this telephone conference with Calder and Oglethorpe in the beginning Calder said it would be “classified information” when Oglethorpe wants to share the data. Yet in the Martian they said they would be required to release the photos once they realized that the vehicle on Mars has been moved. I know its only films but what is the real rule/law here? Would they share something that could impact life on this planet immediatly?
Pretty sure there are no rules in these spots.
Second wing deployed and just needs to be latched into place and the deployment is complete. Then comes the calibration
https://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1479861139089596421
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Awesome. Feeling pretty good about it now.