[Spacetalk] https://www.nasa.gov/index.html; https://spaceflightnow.com; https://www.jpl.nasa.gov

[Gabe Gabrielle]

Good morning all,

 I know many are on Holiday vacation….I want to wish those who celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa, a wonderful day filled with happiness and love…it has certainly been an amazing year…who would have thought last year, at this time, we would still be battling the pandemic despite all the preventive measures,...it seems we are not doing much better than a year ago as the latest strain has many in lockdown…in the US many people will be traveling, having parties with huge celebrations... there is a good possibility a big spike will occur…hopefully, with so many vaccinated, the results will not be as tragic…

Tomorrow morning, Christmas day, James Webb Telescope is scheduled to launch…astronomers around the world will be following closely as the launch was initially planned for 2007...many factors have caused the delays but hopefully, tomorrow morning, it will be a Christmas present for scientists around the world.  

The Webb space telescope is currently scheduled to launch no earlier than 7:20 a.m. on Saturday (Dec. 25) from the Guiana Space Center <https://www.space.com/33949-guiana-space-center.html> in Kourou, French Guiana. On that day, you'll be able to watch one of several English-language virtual launch events on NASA Live <https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive>, as well as Space.com, where we will also be streaming the telescope's flight courtesy of NASA TV. NASA will also broadcast the launch on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/NASA>, Twitter <https://twitter.com/nasa>, YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ>, Twitch <https://www.twitch.tv/nasa> and Daily Motion <https://www.dailymotion.com/NASA>. 

We have to stay positive and always be thankful… remembering to do our best, enjoy everything we do, believe in ourselves, and let those we care about most know (I always say this, we all need to take it to heart) …hugs… STAY SAFE, TAKE CARE, Love ya, Gabe :-) :-) 

CHRISTMAS/HOLIDAY GREETINGS FROM MY HOME TO YOURS...






The Secrets Of The Universe <https://www.facebook.com/groups/181112585774626/user/100052908322353/?__cft__[0]=AZXNg1KHBmAEoIKquIT0k49e1BcsfjRrMdZnZLfER4OljthJpUOISphYB4nmvFU8Qd3HEcO_pSx29D8FiGMVZSHHoBr7e51AKkraQCpEknC2sjBtU30W7RT4jjOw7FN9Ib0evCT0zA67HFRY7O0QFd3W6S6m8xjvKErUzBKI2_oH1Kl9nKoYWVFL-u2UXIgyfTaCsDrhMq_Rt8t-_FWaWM6S&__tn__=-]C%2CP-y-R> posted an episode of James Webb Space Telescope <https://www.facebook.com/watch/100052908322353/3081674585493561/?__cft__[0]=AZXNg1KHBmAEoIKquIT0k49e1BcsfjRrMdZnZLfER4OljthJpUOISphYB4nmvFU8Qd3HEcO_pSx29D8FiGMVZSHHoBr7e51AKkraQCpEknC2sjBtU30W7RT4jjOw7FN9Ib0evCT0zA67HFRY7O0QFd3W6S6m8xjvKErUzBKI2_oH1Kl9nKoYWVFL-u2UXIgyfTaCsDrhMq_Rt8t-_FWaWM6S&__tn__=C%2CP-y-R>.
8h  ·  <https://www.facebook.com/events/birthdays/#>
The James Webb Space Telescope is Ready. Finally!!
 <https://www.facebook.com/events/birthdays/#> <https://www.facebook.com/events/birthdays/#>
 <https://www.facebook.com/events/birthdays/#>#nasa <https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/nasa?__eep__=6&__cft__[0]=AZXNg1KHBmAEoIKquIT0k49e1BcsfjRrMdZnZLfER4OljthJpUOISphYB4nmvFU8Qd3HEcO_pSx29D8FiGMVZSHHoBr7e51AKkraQCpEknC2sjBtU30W7RT4jjOw7FN9Ib0evCT0zA67HFRY7O0QFd3W6S6m8xjvKErUzBKI2_oH1Kl9nKoYWVFL-u2UXIgyfTaCsDrhMq_Rt8t-_FWaWM6S&__tn__=*NK-y-R> #space <https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/space?__eep__=6&__cft__[0]=AZXNg1KHBmAEoIKquIT0k49e1BcsfjRrMdZnZLfER4OljthJpUOISphYB4nmvFU8Qd3HEcO_pSx29D8FiGMVZSHHoBr7e51AKkraQCpEknC2sjBtU30W7RT4jjOw7FN9Ib0evCT0zA67HFRY7O0QFd3W6S6m8xjvKErUzBKI2_oH1Kl9nKoYWVFL-u2UXIgyfTaCsDrhMq_Rt8t-_FWaWM6S&__tn__=*NK-y-R>  https://www.facebook.com/secretsofuniverse/videos/636560304319713 <https://www.facebook.com/secretsofuniverse/videos/636560304319713> 


The world’s largest space telescope is set to launch on Christmas. Here’s how to watch.
The James Webb Space Telescope is finally launching. But so much can still go wrong. 
By Brian Resnick <https://www.vox.com/authors/brian-resnick>@B_resnick <https://www.twitter.com/B_resnick>brian at vox.com <mailto:brian at vox.com>  Dec 24, 2021, 7:00am EST <>
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An artist’s depiction of the JWST deployed in space. NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez
After decades of planning, engineering, many delays, and some controversy <https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/james-webb-space-telescope-nasa-controversy/620445/>, it’s finally happening: The James Webb Space Telescope <https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22664709/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date-december-science-hubble> is set <https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1473761655603482631> to launch at 7:20 am Eastern on Saturday, December 25, making it a long-awaited Christmas present for scientists around the world. (Though further delays are possible. Earlier this week, NASA was eyeing a Christmas Eve launch but changed plans <https://twitter.com/nasa/status/1473408195158626307?s=21> due to bad weather.) 

After the telescope launches from French Guiana to a point nearly a million miles away <https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Herschel/L2_the_second_Lagrangian_Point> from Earth, it will become the largest telescope in space, capable of showing humanity regions of space (and time) never seen before.

NASA, which is launching the telescope in collaboration with the European Space Agency and Canada, will broadcast the launch live, with a feed scheduled to start at 6 am Eastern. You can stream it below. 

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2021/12/24/22846430/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date-livestream <https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2021/12/24/22846430/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date-livestream> 

Be prepared for a nail-biter. The launch and subsequent deployment are high-stakes for a few reasons:

The telescope has to pull off a difficult mechanical maneuver: assembling itself, in space. The telescope is so large — about the size of a tennis court — that it needs to launch folded up inside the rocket. Once in space, it needs to deploy and unfold itself, flawlessly, in sequence over the course of several weeks <https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/the-road-to-launch-and-beyond-for-nasa-s-james-webb-space-telescope>. Accor <https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/the-road-to-launch-and-beyond-for-nasa-s-james-webb-space-telescope>d <https://appel.nasa.gov/2021/11/24/webbs-deployments-most-complex-ever-attempted/>ing to NASA <https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/the-road-to-launch-and-beyond-for-nasa-s-james-webb-space-telescope>, there are more than 300 “single point failures” involved in the mission. These are technical problems that, if they arise, could doom the whole endeavor. (See how the Webb unfolds in the video below.)
RELATED

The largest space telescope in history is about to blow our minds <https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22664709/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date-december-science-hubble>
Because the Webb is being sent so far away — about four times the distance of the Earth to the moon — if anything goes wrong with the telescope mechanically, scientists on the ground will be out of luck. It will not be possible to launch a crewed mission to repair it. (The Hubble Space Telescope, infamously, had to be repaired after it was launched. It’s only 340 miles away.) 
The cost. After being approved in the early 2000s, the telescope was originally supposed to launch in 2010 <https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2002/news-2002-20.html> and cost around $1 billion <https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/8/22663027/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date>. Since then, the price tag has ballooned to around $10 billion.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2021/12/24/22846430/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date-livestream <https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2021/12/24/22846430/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date-livestream> 

If the Webb survives its journey and deploys according to plan, scientists say it will be a paradigm-shifting telescope in terms of our understanding of the universe. 

Why the James Webb Space telescope is such a big deal 
The Webb, which is (controversially <https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/james-webb-space-telescope-nasa-controversy/620445/>) named after a former NASA administrator, improves on its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, in two key ways. The first is just its size: Hubble was about the size of a school bus, whereas Webb is more like the size of a tennis court. “This thing is enormous,” Amber Straughn <https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sed/bio/amber.n.straughn>, an astrophysicist at NASA who works on the Webb, said earlier this year. “Webb is by far the biggest telescope NASA’s ever attempted to send into space.”

But it’s not just the total size of the contraption that matters. When it comes to reflecting telescopes like these, the key component is the size of its curved mirror. Hubble’s mirror was an impressive 7.8 feet in diameter. Webb’s beautiful, gold-hued mirrors combine for a diameter of 21.3 feet. Overall, that amounts to more than six times the light-collecting area <https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/forScientists/faqScientists.html#collectingarea>.


NASA
The Webb’s other advantage is the type of light it collects.

Light comes in a lot of different varieties. The human eye can see only a narrow band known as visible light, but the universe contains lots of light outside this range, including the higher-frequency, higher-energy forms: ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays. Then there’s the lower-energy light with longer wavelengths: infrared, microwaves, radio.


Hubble could observe a little bit of infrared light, but Webb takes it much further. NASA and J. Olmstead (STScI)
The Hubble Space Telescope collects visible light, ultraviolet, and a little bit of infrared. The Webb is primarily an infrared telescope <https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/51145917599/in/photostream/>, so it sees light with a longer wavelength than our eyes can see. This seems nerdy and technical, but it’s actually what allows Webb to look further back in time than the Hubble. 

Infrared light is often very old light, due to a phenomenon called redshifting. When a light source is moving away from a viewer, it gets stretched out, morphing into longer and longer wavelengths. Because space is constantly expanding, the farthest things away from us in the universe are moving away from us. “And as light travels through space from those distant galaxies, the light is literally stretched by the expansion of space,” Straughn says.

This is also why the Webb is being launched so far away. Because Webb is an infrared telescope, it needs to be kept cold. The Earth itself is warm and glows in infrared. “Anything warm glows in infrared light,” Straughn says. “If the telescope was warm, it would just glow and see itself.” So NASA and its partners are sending the telescope to orbit a point in space called a Lagrange point <https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Herschel/L2_the_second_Lagrangian_Point>, a spot where the telescope can orbit the sun, all the while staying cold and in line with the Earth.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2021/12/24/22846430/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date-livestream <https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2021/12/24/22846430/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date-livestream> 
The James Webb Space Telescope’s orbit, as seen from above the sun’s north pole and from Earth’s perspective. Michael McClare/Aaron E. Lepsch/Josh Masters via NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
All told, these features will allow astronomers to look not only farther out in space but also further back in time. Webb will be able to search for the first stars and galaxies of the universe <https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/science/firstLight.html>, and see “cosmic dawn,” a time when the universe went from being opaque <https://astronomy.com/magazine/news/2021/01/the-beginning-to-the-end-of-the-universe-the-cosmic-dark-ages> and dark to transparent and filled with starlight. It will allow scientists to make careful studies of numerous exoplanets <https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22664709/james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date-december-science-hubble> — planets that orbit stars other than our sun — and even embark on a search for signs of life there.

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