Well…around christmas, the James Webb Space Telescope, which I will call the JWST from now on, was launched towards it’s L2 station point and most of us science geeks were elated and concerned at the same time since there were over 300 things that needed to work perfectly for it to be usable…there were a couple of pieces of good news on the scope yesterday that I wanted to talk about here…first, the launch was so accurate that they had to burn very little thruster fuel to make course  corrections and that means instead of having enough fuel for 5 years, the operators of the scope think they will have enough for 10-12 years and that is really good news since there is no way to refuel it with it being so far away…and second, the tennis court sized sunscreen successfully deployed yesterday and it is locked in place with no problems so we’re halfway there in getting it ready to start observations in a couple of months…still going to keep my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong and I just can’t wait for “first light” and the science that can be done with it…

Well…any of you who have been here before know me to be a science geek who still watches every rocket launch that is televised and reads a lot about things happening in science…and tomorrow, something really cool is happening at 7:24 in the morning…the James Webb space telescope is going to be launched from French Guyana and I’m a little nervous about that….The Arianne V rocket that is going to launch it has a great reliability record so getting it to space probably won’t be the problem…but there are over 300 discrete actions that have to happen to get it ready for observing and if any one doesn’t go right, we will have a 12 billion dollar lump of coal in our stockings. Since the mirror and sun shield are too big to fit on even the biggest rockets, they had to be folded into a much smaller package…and then it has to unfold itself once in space and on the way to the L2 Lagrange point a million miles away…and they are using that point since it is the point where the Earth and the sun’s gravity balance out and it takes a lot less fuel to keep in place…but that takes it so far away that if it doesn’t go right, there is no way to service it…I do have faith that NASA can make it work…I am a little nervous….

Well….I wonder why I am having such problems finding topics these days? I know I’ve done almost 10,000 of these but there are still things happening in the world that interest me….and I still read a lot so that can’t be it….I haven’t done one on science in a long time and I wonder why that is? There are cool things happening with the James Webb space telescope getting ready for launch in December….and that instrument will resolve 10 times fainter objects that even Hubble and it isn’t even going to be in orbit around the Earth…it is going to be set at one of the Lagrange points a million miles from Earth in a stable orbit that will trail the Earth in it’s orbit…it has a mirror that is 6 times larger than Hubble and will see in infrared light that will allow us to see through the dust and gas towards the center of the galaxy and may even be able to see the black hole that is there and that would be pretty cool…and it will happen in my lifetime but it may be the last cool telescope that is launched before I’m gone….hey, I found a topic! Okay, it’s cheating a little bit but I need to get on the windows in here and get these two done…I did get the kitchen one done already and I got two bike rides in so I guess I could put these off…nope, going to do at least one before soccer comes on….