This was one of Webb's most nerve-wracking post-launch steps.
to seek out faint heat signals from the early universe. Detecting such signals requires that Webb keep its instruments and optics extremely cold, and the sunshield will help it do just that by reflecting and radiating away solar energy.
The shiny silver shield measures 69.5 feet long by 46.5 feet wide when fully deployed — far too large to fit inside the protective payload fairing of any currently operational rocket. So it was designed to launch in a highly compact configuration and thenThat deployment is an elaborate, multistep process with many different potential failure points that could sink the entire mission.
"Webb's sunshield assembly includes 140 release mechanisms, approximately 70 hinge assemblies, eight deployment motors, bearings, springs, gears, about 400 pulleys and 90 cables totaling 1,312 feet [400 m]," Webb spacecraft systems engineer Krystal Puga, who works at Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor for the mission, said in aSunshield deployment began on Tuesday when Webb lowered the two pallets that hold the five-layer structure.
"Switches that should have indicated that the cover rolled up did not trigger when they were supposed to," Patrick Lynch, deputy chief of the communications office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland,"However, secondary and tertiary sources offered confirmation that it had," Lynch added.
Webb team members initiated deployment of the port mid-boom at 1:30 p.m. EST on Friday, Lynch wrote, and the activity wrapped up at 4:49 p.m. EST . Extension of the starboard mid-boom began at 6:31 p.m. EST and was done by around 10:13 p.m. EST , Lynch wrote in
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