With the conversion constants in hexadecimal, FFS. 
Unless that’s just an artifact of the debugger you’re using to look at the code?
They’ve juggled the deployment schedule a bit.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/01/02/deployment-timeline-adjusted-as-team-focuses-on-observatory-operations/
No, that’s the straight text from the page. However, they clearly ran it through an obsucator, since all of the variable names are random hex codes (only the string constants are readable). May not have been intentional; I think some page generator frameworks will obfuscate by default.
Thanks for that! I was looking for news updates but didn’t see that.
They appear to have moved down the major mirror deployments by several days while they continue to dink around with whatever they’re dinking around with, per the earlier link. No indication of problems, just a delay because there’s no hurry and they’re taking time to check a lot of things out.
The blog page of the Webb site is now saying that the first three layers of the sunshield have been tensioned, so they seem to be proceeding with the deployment schedule.
I suspect that it’s also a matter of committed time. Solar system objects have a much greater apparent brightness than distant galaxies. In order to collect enough light to get a good picture of them probably takes much less time.
The Hubble Deep Field required about 140 hours of Hubble staring at a single spot, with the Ultra Deep Field taking 267 hours.
I imagine that solar system objects will only need a fraction of an hour each to get a good view.
Makes sense to start with the stuff that can be knocked out quickly, then once that’s all done, start doing these longer exposures to image further objects.
Though, calibration is a good point as well. We have pretty good data on some of these solar system objects, so even though JWST may return more data than we currently have, we still have a pretty good idea of what it should look like. If it starts returning that Enceladus is made of cheese, then we know that there is some recalibrating to be done.
Sunshield tensioning complete:
The phrase “344 single-point failures” is a little nightmare-inducing, I have to say.
Can’t have nightmares if you’re up in the middle of the night with anxiety sweats…
Only ~86 single point failures to go…
I wonder if some, while bad, would not be mission ending. If one of the two main mirror assemblies didn’t fold out, there would still be a lot of mirror segments available.
Brian
If I understood a NASA representative the mirrors are adjustable. Not just their angle to the secondary mirror but the mirrors themselves. If there’s some optical issue like they had with the Hubble they will be able to correct it. Somewhere out there is a cosmic eye chart.
Based on what I know about the spacecraft, once the sun shield is fully deployed my worry level will drop dramatically. The sunshield deployment has never been demonstrated in space, and the potential for small problems with the deployment to create heat leaks is large.
The other deployments are intricate and critical, but all are built around deployment technology that has been proven in flight (actuation, sequencing, control).
It is, in fact, the upcoming deployment of the secondary mirror that is obviously absolutely crucial. Its function is to reflect the light gathered by the primary mirror back down to the instrument package at its base. Without the secondary mirror, the telescope is completely useless. For that reason, I bet the deployment mechanism is exceptionally robust, probably with redundancies. It also looks relatively simple.
The sun shield deployment is complete. Remaining steps are secondary mirror deployment, deployment of a radiator, folding out the wings of the primary mirror, and aligning the primary mirror elements. Oh, and the L2 insertion burn.
Better like this or better like this?
Don’t laugh! When Hubble first went up, it turned out to be unfortunately near-sighted (actually, what it had was a high degree of spherical aberration). The primary mirror had been ground to a high degree of precision, but the wrong shape. The solution was to equip the Hubble with a pair of spectacles – the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) which exactly corrected the mirror’s deficiency. Yes, the world’s most sophisticated space telescope for the past 30 years has been wearing glasses!
nm nm
Also check out this video of JWST being released from its launch vehicle and subsequent deployment of its solar panels. With Blue Danube as mood music, of course.
Apologies if these vids have already been posted.
Excellent 