Starlink 4-5 and James Webb Update [Live: 06.01.2022, UTC 21:49]

over 2 years ago (Edited)

James Webb Update

Maybe the most exciting launch of 21 was the long awaited and often postponed launch of JWST. So far space origami is going well. Unfolding and establishing the telescope takes 50 separate movements. The whole process has 344 single points of failure (Launching the World’s Biggest Space Telescope).

To illustrate: if we assume a failure likelihood of 1 in 1000, that only gives a chance of 71% for the whole deployment phase.

Original minimum design life was 6 years. Because the Ariane rocket delivered the telescope to the perfect position, a lot of maneuvering fuel can be saved and it is expected to last for at least 10 years now.

Goddard Space Flight Center is providing live updates of the current state of James Webb.

Source: NASA

Last completed step was "Secondary Mirror Deployment". Have a look at animations of the single deployment steps: NASA

CRS 24

The brand new booster must have suffered an incident during transport on a barge. The landing looked good, but the booster arrived with significant damage to the landing legs and engine nozzles in port.

Starlink 4-5

SpaceX closed 2021 with 31 missions. 17 were for Starlink. SpaceX is allowed to 60 missions per year from Florida. Let's see how close they get this year.

SpaceX is launching 49 additional Satellites for their own Starlink Constellation.

This is the fourth batch of satellites for the 4th layer of the constellation. Shell 4 is in a 540km circular low-Earth orbit. These satellites are equiped with laser links installed.

The booster is a Block 5 and will land on a drone ship. This is the first time a booster will be reflown for the 4th time.

The mission to low earth orbit will launch from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Weather is 80% go according to the 45th Weather Squadron.

Cargo: