
Telescope That ‘Ate Astronomy’ Is on Track to Surpass Hubble - dnetesn
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/science/nasa-webb-space-telescope-hubble.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
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cmrx64
One of my friends works at the STSCI on various visualization and simulation
tools (all web-based, written in a modern stack!) for planning missions for
this thing. It's a really really neat project.

The telescope itself is "scriptable" using a (truly ancient) version of JS via
a really old implementation that I've seen referenced but can't find right
now. There's a lot of open information about the JWST, but it's not widely
reported on. Definitely worth checking out if you're interested in space,
technology, and the systems we actually deploy into the void!

Some papers:
[http://www.stsci.edu/~idash/pub/dashevsky0607rcsgso.pdf](http://www.stsci.edu/~idash/pub/dashevsky0607rcsgso.pdf)

[http://arc-test.aiaa.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2514/6.2006-5747](http://arc-
test.aiaa.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2514/6.2006-5747)

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Analemma_
Oh lord, JavaScript goes to space. You thought losing the MCO because of
Imperial units was embarrassing? Just wait until this $9 billion telescope
explodes because [] == ![] or something.

(This was supposed to be humorous, just making sure)

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gfody
Seriously though, considering how deeply every other aspect of this project
was deliberated (presumably, given the cost involved) - how they could
possibly end up going with Javascript is bizarre. You'd think there would be a
preference for arbitrary precision and against undefined behavior.

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writeslowly
I can't find the evaluation paper they cited in the second linked paper, but
it looks like it's using Javascript because they wanted a COTS script engine
(as opposed to running compiled code) that was compatible with VxWorks, and
the particular Javascript engine they selected (ScriptEase) was presumably the
best option they found back in 2003. I'm not really sure what all options they
would have had in 2003 though.

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jdale27
They should have hired Erann Gat to do it in Lisp.

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elihu
I can understand the sense of "we just spent 8.7 billion dollars on this
thing; we'd better not screw it up", but I wonder what the replacement cost
would actually be if they had to launch another? Assuming they spent most of
the money on R&D, it might actually be relatively cheap. Maybe we could even
launch a couple smaller versions just to have backups and do the science tasks
that don't require a full 21' mirror.

There's an interesting contrast between NASA's and Elon Musk's idea of what
space exploration should be like; the former spends most of its efforts on
one-off projects, whereas the latter is focused on making things cheap and
repeatable and achieving reliability by iterating on a design rather than
getting it perfect the first go-around.

Both approaches are needed, and certainly NASA paves the way for others to
come along and do the same thing cheaper once it's been proven.

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PetitPrince
Hubble design was designed to be compatible to some extent with military spy
satellite. Perhaps here it is again the case ?

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InclinedPlane
I can assure you that there is very little design commonality between JWST and
surveillance satellites. JWST is a very unique mission that is completely
different from that of spysats.

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jrussino
Last week Dr. Michael Ressler at JPL gave a talk about the Webb telescope,
mostly focused on the mid-range infrared imaging sensor:

[http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.php?year=201...](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.php?year=2016&month=11)

If you happen to be in the LA area, JPL hosts these talks once a month at
their facility in Pasedena. They're free and open to the public, and they're
always interesting. And if you can't attend they're also posted to the JPL
website.

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yaacov
Is there a way to get email notifications when they're holding an event?

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aantix
[https://visualping.io/?url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/le...](https://visualping.io/?url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures.php)

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hackuser
> A House subcommittee once voted to cancel it. Instead, the program was
> rebooted with a strict spending cap. ... The major change, said Jonathan P.
> Gardner, the deputy senior project scientist, was to simplify the testing of
> the telescope.

Ugh, that does not sound encouraging. Organizations love to cut testing and
QA. After all, all they do is cost money, cause delays, and 'create' problems.
Cutting them is an obvious way to bring a project under budget and on
schedule.

Does anyone know what changes were made to testing?

We're going to be unhappy, and the advancement of astronomy delayed a long
time, if something goes wrong. I don't see the next President and Congress
wanting to raise revenue and spend more on science.

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semaphoreP
I believe the initial estimates for the budget were extremely optimistic. I
believe after Congress almost cut funding on it, they came up with a very
realistic budget and schedule and have been following it very closely since. I
know people who are working on the testing, and it seems like they aren't
cutting corners. So I wouldn't worry more than normal for deploying a 6.5 m
telescope in space.

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hackuser
Thanks; that informs the discussion.

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Animats
"Ate astronomy" means it costs more than all the proposed big ground-based
telescopes combined. The Overwhelming Large Telescope was considered too
expensive at $1.5bn.

It's the F-35 of astronomy.

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DavidWanjiru
I've never been able to wrap my head around the scientific premise of hoping
to observe radiation from the early universe. I studied physics in university
but I was very crap at it and never graduated, so that might explain it.

The reason I can't is because I assume that the EM radiation that resulted
from the Big Bang happened before we did (we as in our neck of the cosmos),
and that radiation left the epicenter of the Big Bang before we did. Assuming
that radiation has been moving radially outward since then, how can we hope to
observe it yet it has a head start on us?

The Big Bang is not an event that happened in the universe. It's the event
that brought forth the universe.

It's possible for us to observe, say, a supernova that exploded even before
our solar system, for example, existed. But that supernova was an event in the
universe, and it's light may take billions of years to reach another part of
the universe and for entities in that part of the universe to now observe it,
even if those entities didn't exist at the time the supernova exploded.

That I understand. But the Big Bang? Isn't that different? Isn't trying to
observe the Big Bang a bit like trying to observe your own birth?

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nicktelford
Disclaimer: I Am Not A Physicist.

The Big Bang didn't happen in a specific location some distance from us - it
created all of spacetime; the epicentre was at every point[1] in space.

[1]: for want of better phrasing, given that we don't know if spacetime is
discreet or continuous.

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verytrivial
[http://spacenews.com/op-ed-the-approaching-battle-over-
the-j...](http://spacenews.com/op-ed-the-approaching-battle-over-the-jwst-
budget-wedge/)

This article contains a graph of the JWST programme's appetite.

While I'm looking forward (eagerly!) to that telescope's imaging, I am also
really looking forward to what other projects become possible once it is no
longer on the teat. (And the sooner the ISS burns up in the upper atmosphere
the better for the exact same reason).

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simosx
The deployment of the telescope looks quite a complicated process.

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adevine
Yeah, honestly, I think I got anxious for the engineers just watching it. If
any of that unfurling just hits one minor snag, it's 8.7 billion up in smoke.

Does anyone with more information about the telescope know how they are able
to keep such tight tolerances given how the telescope deploys? For example, I
remember the original Hubble telescope had a spherical aberration that
amounted to less than the width of a human hair. Surely the way the side
mirrors deploy, and the way the front mirror unfolds into place, can't have
tolerances that tight. How does the telescope account for that potential
variance?

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maxxxxx
The Hubble's problem wasn't tolerances but the mirror got produced with the
wrong numbers. For the wrong numbers it was within tolerance :-). But yes, I
am not sure if I could handle the stress on working on something like this for
years and then watch it deploy without any possibility of fixing problems.
This must be incredibly stressful.

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SubiculumCode
Please use a _safe_ rocket to get into space. That would be one stressful
rocket ride for the project scientists on earth.

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smellf
I was thinking the same thing - JWST is slated to ride an Ariane 5, which has
had something like 75 consecutive successful launches.

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SubiculumCode
As much as I admire SpaceX...not the job for them yet.

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smellf
Not this satellite. Not yet.

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happytrails
well, you can't put a price tag on knowledge and discovery :)

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thechao
8.7 billion USD.

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bronson
and beyond!

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outworlder
So, 8 nuclear submarines, give or take? Or a couple dozen F-35s?

I'd say it's a better investment.

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Already__Taken
I know you're being facetious but the program to create the f35 was $55bn and
that doesn't even get you a jet off the production line. And we've build jets
for decades.

NASA must be doing outstanding work for what they get out of the money.

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elihu
This may be obvious to everyone else, but today I learned that
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Webb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Webb)
is not the same person as 2016 Democratic primary candidate
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Webb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Webb)

I feel a little better know. I was wondering why we would name a space
telescope after that guy.

~~~
yk
Perhaps we should start naming space telescopes after politicians, so that
NASA's budget has an easier time in congress.

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gruturo
This is precisely what happened. Edwin Hubble was an astronomer, James Webb a
NASA administrator.

