So long, Webb telescope!

Beautiful video of her separation.

Newbomb had to learn origami for that one. :wink:

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I’m looking forward to what the Webb telescope can show us. The numbers and distances won’t really mean anything to me. Those numbers are just too big to be meaningful, and we live too short of a lifespan to do anything about those numbers. But to get more understanding of what our universe is like will be quite cool and intersting.

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The headline for this gave me pause. I thought maybe on of the 400+ steps had failed, and it was now a 5 Billion dollar man-made asteroid.

The engineering on this is a marvel.

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I thought the same thing. I’m glad it worked.

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My wife sent some of the bills for Orbital ATK’s work on it. That was good because it helped her get paid and I get to reap some of those benefits.

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The (now) Northrop Grumman facility in Goleta, CA (previously part of Mission Systems Corp., then ATK, then Orbital ATK) specializes in the mechanics of folding spacecraft up so that it fits into the payload fairing of the rocket, and deploying it. It’s amazing what they do, taking things that maybe up to 30 meters in diameter and figuring out how to pack them into a 4 or 5 meter fairing. Among the constraints are where various umbilicals for power, A/C, etc., ordnance lines for fairing separation, the standardized attach rings, and such. In my contacts with them over the years I walked out of the room feeling pretty inadequate. Their minds were amazing.

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20 years of fuel, thanks to this rocket.

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