Talk:James Webb Space Telescope/Archive 1

Spectrum
I'd heard that the JWST had a different spectrum from the HST and, thus, was meant to augment rather than supplant the HST. Is this true? blahpers 04:18, 2005 Jan 22 (UTC)

This is true; JWST will be primarily an infrared observatory, whereas HST was mostly optical. AdamW 20:45, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with your dissagrement of

"intended to be a significant improvement on the aging Hubble Space Telescope"
 * It's like sayig This apple is redder than that orage is orange. Should we tag a citatin needed to the line and remove it if none is found?  I remeber somewhere it said specifically it is not a replacement.  I need a sorce for that thoug.--E-Bod 22:12, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Ps I am verry persanally attached to the HST so it would be inapropreat for me to make that change. The JWT isn't even even disined to be esily servisable and not be an ongoing thing (i remeber a long time ago it will be for 4 years, but this artile says 5(probably more current))(of corse same for all the other projects they allways love to underestimate their equipent so they can't be dissaponted and they proclam How Wonderul a sucsess when the misson last way longer than "expected" --E-Bod 22:12, 26 March 2006 (UTC))
 * How can it be designed to be easily servicable when it is 1.5 Gm from Earth. Give me a break.  Because you love HST doesn't mean you have to bag on JWST.  How completely odd.

Failed Version 0.5 nomination
I have failed this article for Version 0.5 for several reasons: With improvements, this may be good enough for Version 1.0 in the future, but it is not at written encyclopaedia quality yet. I would rate it a strong start class. --Rory096 05:35, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) It has very few refs, and none are inline. Articles should have as many references as possible to verify the information.
 * 2) It isn't very comprehensive. This may be because it's far into the future, so this wasn't really the deciding factor.
 * 3) It's not very notable. It may be the most important astronomical telescope when launched, but that's at least 7 years away, and most people haven't heard of it now.

Deorbit date wrong
The deorbit date has to be wrong, Hubble will last for at least 20 years yet this will last 5? If this is true then the project should be scrapped for being a waste of time and money.


 * That five years is more an artifact of the procurement process than an actual plan. Essentially they say "specify what observations you want your proposed instrument to make, design a platform that will achieve that, cost it, and the funding and science comittees will decide if that's good science-value-for-money". So when they say JWST will last five years they really mean that the observations they plan to do in those five years will justify the price of the telescope, and that the engineers are sure (to a reasonable degree of certainty) that the systems they've designed will last long enough to succeed in that goal.  In practice things are overspecified, overdesigned, and overbuilt, and so many things last much longer.  Nobody expected Voyager to be working after its planned encounters (certainly not a decade later), the Mars rovers were planned to work for a month or two and still work more than a year later, and Hubble was planned for a few years (I think seven). So it's likely that we'll see good science from JWST long after its official death-date.  That said, its high altitude means it's way out of the reach of the Space Shuttle (and who knows what, or when, Crew Exploration Vehicle will actually be able to do); there's no chance of an in-flight upgrade - so it almost certainly will have a shorter life than Hubble.  That's not such a bad deal, even if it is only five years.  Once you amortise the cost of shuttle missions to maintain HST, or face the progressively poorer science you'd get from an aging, deteriorating obervatory, it's probably cheaper and smarter to launch a new, cutting-edge telescope when the old one fails. And just like other modern electronics products, if you don't have to make something repairable you can make it much much cheaper. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The website of JWST refers to a "design" mission length of 5 years and a "goal" mission length of 10 years. I've replaced "deorbit date" with those two numbers. Of course the actual mission length is not known ahead of time. Kingdon 16:49, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Hubble wasn't supposed to last 16 years when they launched it. The Mars Rovers were supposed to last only 3 months (they're still working, more than 2 years later. The same observation can be made about the Galileo probe. What we should understand is that any probe or satellite has a primary mission, which lasts a finite amount of time. If everything goes fine, the mission is extended indefinitely... for as long as the piece of hardware keeps going (and going and going). Limitations can come from batteries or propeller tanks, from the inability to service it (due to the distance), or from degradation suffered from the space medium (cold, radiations, micro-meteorites). Best regards, Hugo Dufort 06:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Possible grammar error
Shouldn't the bold phrase be changed to 6 times as large? Although JWST has a planned mass half that of the Hubble, its primary mirror (a 6.5 meter diameter beryllium reflector) has a collecting area which is almost 6 times larger.68.238.103.129 05:26, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Without a source, we can't tell which is correct. It would not be a grammar error; it would be a math error. Mathematically, "six times as large" equates to 6 x 1. "Six times larger" equates to 1 + (6 x 1). Remember that 1.0 is the same as 100%, so the language can be demonstrated logically like this:
 * Let's say you have a weight that is 100 pounds. If you have another weight that is 50% (half) as heavy, it would be 50 pounds. 100 x 0.5 = 50
 * Now again let's say you have a weight that is 100 pounds. If you have another weight that is 50% heavier, it would be 150 pounds. 100 + (100 x 0.5) = 150
 * --JHP 08:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

CNN has reported that "The Webb telescope will be given a primary mirror whose surface is about six times the size of the one on Hubble." 999mal 07:04, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Docking ring
Regarding the docking ring, the New Scientist article URL (added by ) works fine for me. I'm not sure why had trouble accessing it. The spin in this article is very different from the space.com article, that's for sure. But I'm not sure the two quite contradict each other. In the space.com article, the NASA guy is quoted as saying "We are going to design for the James Webb Space Telescope a little ring". Note that he says they will design the ring, not whether they will include the ring in the final design for Webb. If we really wanted to cover whether the ring will happen or not in an NPOV way, we could elaborate more on the pros, the cons, what has been analyzed, what still needs to be analyzed, what has been recommended by whom to whom, etc, etc. But I'm skeptical that we really want that level of detail when we can just use words like "is considering" and link to the articles (and any others which are more authoritative than media news articles, if available). I've made an edit which does roughly that but if we still have problems with what to say, we should probably hash things out on the talk page. Kingdon 00:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that, it's working for me now... I must have had the one minute that I couldn't connect to the site for some reason... Anyways, I don't have enough time to figure out what's right right now, but thanks for correcting me. Tuvas 01:15, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Can't take optical pictures like Hubble
I've read that since the JWST is primarily infrared (with some optical capability), that it won't be able to take pictures in the optical spectrum anywhere near as amazing as the Hubble has been doing, anyone have more info on that? --Fxer 18:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually the JWST is not even sensitive in the optical spectrum. It's instruments are designed for Near Infrared and Mid Infrared. Hubble is sensitive to a MUCH larger part of the spectrum than the JWST. JWST will only replace the Infrared capabilities of Hubble.--Martin Cash 16:02, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The JWST is being designed to operate from the very red part of the visible spectrum (0.6 micrometers) through the mid-infrared (27 micrometers). Because of its larger mirror diameter than the HST it will have HST-like angular resolution in the near-infrared (1-5 mircometers). What this means is that images from the JWST will be just as sharp as the ones we have all gotten used to from the HST. The multi-color capabilities of the JWST (i.e., different filters) will allow one to reconstruct the images with cooler areas/objects colored 'redder' and higher temperature areas/objects colored "bluer", again just like we are used to seeing from the HST. The pictures will be just as amazing, but from a portion of the spectrum not directly observable with the naked eye. JWST is NOT meant to be a replacement for HST. It is the scientific successor to the HST. It will help astronomers further the study of very faint, distant (highly redshifted) galaxies. These galaxies, formed early in the history of the universe, are filled with objects emitting strongly in the restframe ultraviolet and optical. This radiation is shifted into the near and mid infrared by the expansion of the universe. Hence, to study them one needs to optimize the observatory for that portion of the spectrum. This infrared optimization also opens a wealth of observations in areas other than distant galaxy studies.--ericpsmith 21:49, 27 August 2007

Possible source
I saw this article on the subject, so I thought I'd list it here as a possible source.
 * Nasa unveils Hubble's successor, BBC News, May 11, 2007

This also looks like a good source for information on the sunshield. Njerseyguy (talk) 18:25, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Super-tough sunshield to fly on the James Webb Space Telescope, e! Science News, November 12, 2008

Simulated pictures
It seems to me that the simulated pictures are just hubble deep field pictures. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dylanjbyrne (talk • contribs) 12:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC).

- I agree. They are hubble deep field photos. There is also no reference of where they came from and I can find none saying these are true simulations of the performance. 12.183.205.106 (talk) 20:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Timeline
I think a timeline would be helpful, I'd like to know when the project was first announced, major milestones etc...78.21.62.65 (talk) 01:54, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Don't know if a timeline is the best format (there's some discussion at WP:Proseline although nothing there tells us we must or must not format things as a timeline) but we are indeed lacking a reasonable history of the mission (first concepts, getting it approved, budgetary battles, fleshing out the design, etc). If someone has written a real history (like the many for Apollo), that makes it easier, but we could get in some basic facts without getting in too much trouble with WP:SYN. Kingdon (talk) 04:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The Space Telescope Science Institute has a JWST Project History page that might help with this. Beww (talk) 23:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Public display, cause and effect: How can a model that was assembled in May 2007 possibly "been on display at various places since 2005"? 88.71.4.143 (talk) 10:47, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Launch
It's intersting that the JWST is going to be launched by the Ariane rocket. Generally NASA has been mandated to use American launch vehicles (Delta IV or Atlas V). It would be intersting to know the story about this decision. 24.16.88.14 (talk) 17:23, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The article already states that the ESA is contributing the Ariane rocket to the project, so I'm guessing free European rocket > $300-500m American rocket. 209.90.128.43 (talk) 23:58, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Featured Picture
File:James Webb Space Telescope Mirror37.jpg has been featured now, but unfortunately due the be backlog it could take up to a year to be displayed on the main page. — raeky  t  00:55, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Fold-up for launch?
I don't see a description of the deployment approach of the large mirror structure in space? Or does it launch with the mirror assembly in final position under some sort of gigantic fairing? (over 7 metres in diameter?). A description of the deployment design for the huge, multiple-layer radiation shield would also be useful. Does such information exist in the public domain? N2e (talk) 02:28, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * James Webb Space Telescope already discusses this. I suppose an animation may significantly help in the explanation, I've seen some about.  I imagine if any are created by NASA they should be public domain. ChiZeroOne (talk) 02:38, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately after a quick look it appears they were all made by Northrop Grumman, :-( --ChiZeroOne (talk) 03:04, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually I may have found one,, which if I read the media use policy right should be CC Attribution and free-use compatible. Unfortunately it only shows the mirror deployment and not the sunshade but it's better than nothing. ChiZeroOne (talk) 03:12, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * If you count the mirror segments in that video, there are 30+ of them. In reality JWST has 18.  As a result, the way the video shows the mirror segments unfolding is not accurate.198.95.226.224 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 22:00, 25 March 2011 (UTC).


 * If they were made after the contract was given to Northrup, the videos should be in PD anyway as being paid for by NASA for NASA. If they were made prior to the contract, as a proposal, it is likely not in PD. --Xession (talk) 03:18, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Indeed that's true but there is no information to hand about the actual status of those, whether these animations being PD was in fact part of the contract. As far as I'm aware that is not always the case, the animations could have been contracted out to an outside artist by Northrop themselves.  I was trying to find an animation that was clearly PD or free-use. ChiZeroOne (talk) 03:32, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Who is James Webb?
Some history on naming is needed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.142.206.73 (talk) 06:59, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The article discusses this in the second paragraph of the lead. I don't think there needs to be any more than that.  This is an article on the James Webb Space Telescope, not James Webb.  The wikilink provides access to more detailed information on the person.  This is the same as the Hubble article where Edwin Hubble is only given a couple of short mentions. ChiZeroOne (talk) 14:03, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think this belongs in the lead. I recommend moving it into the body.  -daniel


 * It does, since Webb is not well-known. However, I've cut it to the basics (who and why) and there's a linked biography for those who want more. S  B Harris 19:06, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Why is it named after some not notable bureaucrat?!
? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.242.255.83 (talk) 18:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps check out James E. Webb? LouScheffer (talk) 19:50, 27 May 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, why is it named after some not notable, gay-hunting, bureaucrat? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.213.237.107 (talk) 00:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Program Saved by Senate?
Important articles:
 * Senate Panel Restores James Webb Space Telescope Funding


 * NASA Spending Bill Boosts Webb, Funds Commercial Crew


 * Photos: Hubble's Successor, the James Webb Space Telescope


 * NASA Completes Giant Mirrors for Hubble Successor Telescope

--Radical Mallard (talk) 19:27, 18 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I think this still needs to be passed by the House before it means anything. --U5K0'sTalkMake WikiLove not WikiWar 19:46, 18 September 2011 (UTC)


 * With the House and the Senate not in the same political party together with the fact that several budget bills have not been approved now for a couple of years or longer, I agree that the skepticism is justified here. At best you might hope for a "continuing resolution" with the NASA budget.... which would include some funding for the telescope.  That would say "continue what you were doing last year", which is a continuation of previous years due to a lack of a budget being passed then. --Robert Horning (talk) 23:21, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

NASA, ESA and CSA: Equal contributions to the project?
This sentence make it sound like that NASA, ESA and CSA have contributed equally to the project:

"The telescope is an international collaboration of about 17 countries led by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency."

But NASA call themselves the lead partner in the project: http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/faq.html

"NASA is the lead partner in Webb, with significant contributions from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA)."

--Siddtech9 (talk) 13:57, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This used to be in the article, to help answer this question "As of the 2005 re-plan, the life-cycle cost of the project was estimated at about US$ 4.5 billion. This is comprised of approximately $3.5 billion for design, development, launch and commissioning, and approximately $1.0 billion for ten years of operations.  The ESA is contributing about 300M Euros, including the launch, and the Canadian Space Agency about $39M Canadian ." This is out of date, but the point remains that that the USA is by far the biggest, then ESA, then CSA. LouScheffer (talk) 02:31, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I thought the essence of a collaborative project was cooperation. It's not a competition to see who can do the most!86.164.110.90 (talk) 17:52, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Very cold mirror
The introductory paragraph mentions a very large and "very cold" mirror. If that is a terminology I'm not familiar with, it needs to be explained, or be made into a link. But I'm inclined to think it's vandalism. 98.234.105.147 (talk) 06:36, 13 August 2012 (UTC)


 * It's not vandalism, but a crucial technical point. An infra-red telescope needs a very cold mirror (otherwise the glow from the mirror itself fogs the images).  The Hubble uses a room temperature mirror, and hence cannot see far into the infrared.  In the Webb, the designers go to a great deal of trouble to keep the mirror very cold (about 40K as I recall - colder than liquid nitrogen).  It's very difficult - in particular you need to make sure the mirror(s) work at a temperature very different from the temperature used during polishing - but absolutely necessary.   LouScheffer (talk) 11:43, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

File:James Webb Space Telescope Mirror37.jpg to appear as POTD soon
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:James Webb Space Telescope Mirror37.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on August 18, 2012. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2012-08-18. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks! — howcheng  {chat} 18:50, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Very cold
The 2nd sentence of the 1st paragraph descibribes the mirror as "very cold". That sounds strange. is it correct? Pass a Method  talk  13:26, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Depends on your definition of very cold, ~40K is pretty cold! The mirror itself is not actively cooled, there may be others that operate at colder temperatures but off the top of my head I can't think of any. I think the point the editor was trying to get across is that the sun-shield reduces the spacecraft/mirror temperature so thermal radiation from the observatory itself doesn't blind JWST's infra-red sensors. ChiZeroOne (talk) 13:51, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

JWST at SXSW
I think this is notable enough to be included, for what it shows about JWST outreach efforts, if not just for the 3 day exhibit. It's covered by reliable sources: Story in the LA Times]. And there certainly aren't many other projects with travelling models, at least of this size.

The long term impact, of course, must be measured in the long term. One somewhat incestuous way to measure this would be to look at the impact on page view rates, or search for coverage in other sources. LouScheffer (talk) 13:49, 9 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Here I've reverted the unreversion of the removal of this addition. See WP:BRD -- let's not edit war over this in the article while we're discussing theinclusion of this material here. My opinion is that it is WP:UNDUE. Re some specifics about the removed insertion (e.g., "currently"), see WP:DATED. Further n this vein, I suggest further removal of the words "More recently" from the immediately prior paragraph abut the model, and incorporation of the remaining text into the paragraph prior to that. 23:03, 9 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Recently you and User talk:Dawnseeker2000 made three edits to JWST that were perfectly correct in a purely technical sense. Dawn removed a statement without a reference, then removed it again since (in his opinion) it does not have enough long term impact.  Then WTMitchell removed it a third time, without discussing on the talk page first, pointing to whole pile of WP:XXX rules and regulations. If the insertion was done by an established, or even registered, editor I'd have no problem at all with this.  But for an edit made by an IP, it certainly goes against Please do not bite the newcomers.


 * Here is an IP who is not a troll, not a vandal, and added factually and grammatically correct information which might be interesting to a number of people (in particular, those who visit Wikipedia since they see the model at SXSW). Almost surely, he (or she) had the reference available, but did not put it in since they did not know how.  As for notability, any established editor knows that if another editor removes something as un-notable, the usual response is to go to the talk page and argue it out there.  An IP editor often does not know this, so it's worth adding a "please discuss on talk page" to an edit summary for such a deletion.  Also, explaining in words (and kind words) is a lot more helpful than a large pile of Wikipedia-specific acronyms.  We *need* new editors, and having correct stuff deleted three times, with lots of wiki-lawyering about the correct procedure for it, is not a welcoming experience.   LouScheffer (talk) 05:54, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Cost overrun and delayed launch

 * http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=jwst-cost-overruns - The figures [the panel] came up with were a cost of $6.5 billion, up from a prior estimated cost of $5.1 billion, and a launch date of no sooner than September 2015. The telescope had previously been targeted for a June 2014 launch. SOURCE:


 * January 2014, cost: $8.8 billion.  . -BatteryIncluded (talk) 13:48, 13 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Is there any miscalculation about cost? why would be so cheap? only $8.8 billion US dollars. Hong Kong Airport's Third Runway already cost $17.57 billion US dollars. How would the JWST be so cheap?

Deorbit date
Is it correct to talk about a "deorbit date" for a mission at L2? Something out there isn't going to come back to the Earth when it's finished with... AdamW 20:45, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Not really. Generally the objects at L2 simply drift away from the Earth after stationkeeping activities cease, perhaps to crash into it some time in the very distant future. A more pertinent time is the nominal mission life (5 years) and the goal (10 years). Also, the launch date has been changed to 2013 due to budgetary limitations. I am a novice and reluctant to edit such a nice summary for the mission. PeterStockman 19:19, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

In 'Current Status,' it says "Recently NASA has decided to slip the launch date two years to 2013." Can someone throw a date there instead of "recently?" Maybe link to a press release? Shaggorama 10:25, 8 December 2005 (UTC) YA — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.41.12.76 (talk) 17:03, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

power supply
hey; there doesn't seem to be anything about the satellite's power supply? Lx 121 (talk) 04:29, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Like Hubble, it will be solar powered. This is true of essentially all astronomical satellites, and thus is probably not noteworthy enough to deserve specific mention. Mperrin (talk) 01:33, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

respectfully disagree. most automobiles are powered via internal combustion engine; most run on either diesel or gasoline fuel; it's still important & relevant to note the specifics, in describing a particular model/type/etc. of automobile Lx 121 (talk) 10:31, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

What? We're talking about satellites not cars. FFS if it bothers you add a section on power sources, especially if you find something interesting like isotope thermals. 174.113.134.157 (talk) 13:10, 21 July 2011 (UTC) Well if this telescope is solar powered then why will it only have an 11 year life span? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.184.183.116 (talk) 23:13, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Update! JWST currently undergoing 4 month vacuum test
This article needs some serious updating. I'll try to add stuff. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monochrome monitor (talk • contribs) 23:30, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect Orbit Details
The current version of the "Orbit" section says the telescope will have a planned elliptical orbit around L_2, with a radius of 800,000 kilometers, but the concept of a radius does not make sense in an ellipse. Is the orbit actually a circular one? Is anyone able to clarify this specification? 130.215.12.99 (talk) 20:57, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Program cancellation
I guess it is official. I just don't know where to put this bit of "news" into this article but I think it is very much appropriate:

http://appropriations.house.gov/news/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=250023

Congress just cancelled the telescope, ensuring it will never fly. See the NASA section in this press release from the U.S. House of Representatives website:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – NASA is funded at $16.8 billion in the bill, which is $1.6 billion below last year’s level and $1.9 billion below the President’s request. This funding includes:

$4.5 billion for NASA Science programs, which is $431 million below last year’s level. The bill also terminates funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, which is billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management.

As I said, I just don't know how else to work this in, but it is official. I expect that there will be an official statement by NASA about this in the next coming days or so. --Robert Horning (talk) 21:15, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Ouch. I'm not well acquainted with American politics but from what I've read this is a bill still to be debated and hence subject to change?  Or is this final?  It might be an idea to wait for that official statement from NASA, which might include more detail, before revamping the article though. ChiZeroOne (talk) 22:33, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * While there still may be a chance to save the project, it is now an incredibly tough uphill battle that needs a broad constituency to back it up if they want to save it at this point. It isn't "final" as the bill still has to be approved, but this is what is coming out of the appropriations committee where much of the budget negotiations have already taken place.  Essentially, the Webb Telescope has been traded for the Space Launch System due to budget cuts.  Funding for this won't be restored without something huge being cut to replace it, like the ISS getting splashed into the Pacific Ocean.  I also just don't see the huge fan base among ordinary American citizens to scream at getting this built unlike when the Hubble Telescope was being scheduled to be splashed and then at the last minute got another Shuttle service flight to extend its lifetime.


 * BTW, another source of this story can be found with some more details here: http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110706-nasa-budget-cancel-webb.html


 * --Robert Horning (talk) 22:57, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * More stories are coming in now on the topic with more details: http://news.discovery.com/space/eroding-nasa-science-jwst-scrapped.html


 * --Robert Horning (talk) 23:20, 6 July 2011 (UTC)


 * While this is not good news for JWST, it's probably premature to stick a fork in it at this point. This is just the initial bill from the appropriations committee in the House. It has to be debated and voted on by the full House (at which point it would also be subject to amendments). Furthermore, the Senate Appropriations Committee has to prepare its own bills, which are considered and voted upon in that chamber. Finally, the differences between the House and Senate budgets have to be resolved in conference before the final budget gets sent to the President for signature (or veto).  Seventypercent (talk) 14:53, 7 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Zeroing funding does not mean that JWST will never fly. They're likely to mothball it in a warehouse. Other mothballed NASA projects have flown decades later, when new funding was found. 65.93.15.213 (talk) 08:25, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Most of the above is severely overstated, bordering on outright misinformation. In no way has JWST been 'officially' cancelled at this point. All that has happened is that one subcommittee of the House of Representatives has proposed cutting its funding, as part of the negotiations leading towards a FY2012 federal budget. However, the full House of Representatives has yet to weigh in, much less the US Senate or the President. One subcommittee of one house voting for something is a far cry from making it the law of the land. Note that the President's FY2012 Budget Request for NASA included roughly $400M for JWST, and that there are strong supporters in both chambers of the legislature for this project. Yes, it is noteworthy that it has been proposed to cancel the telescope, sure, but please keep some perspective on the way that Federal budget negotiations work! It is very, very common for there to be all kinds of changes proposed early in the negotiations that end up having no impact on the final budget that is adopted. Mperrin (talk) 00:35, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Last comment here is right. I know someone working at Northrop Grumann on JWST and they are going strong. Lots of news (see the picture below.) I'm a fan. -- Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 05:32, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

JWST deployment infograph
I've just found this on nasa's flickr and uploaded it on commons. Is it worth it finding a space for it in the article? Tetra quark (talk) 03:04, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

...anyone? Perhaps I should just be bold and add it, but I'm not sure Tetra quark (talk) 03:04, 24 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Look great to me; really great! -- Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 05:34, 24 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I'll add it tomorrow then. Oh and by the way, what do you think of the new lead image? Do you think it is better than the previous one? Tetra quark (talk) 06:57, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Development section tweak
"Later that year, TRW would be acquired by Northrop Grumman in a hostile bid and became Northrop Grumman Space Technology/Ball Aerospace."

TRW was acquired by Northrop Grumman to become, at the time, Northrop Grumman Space Technology. Ball Aerospace was and is a separate company and not part of the merger. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SullivanCarew (talk) 22:04, 2 May 2015 (UTC)SullivanCarew|SullivanCarew]] (talk • contribs) 01:07, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on James Webb Space Telescope. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bpa/CAA_Nov2005_Presentation_Mather.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20140403051459/http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20110605/NEWS01/110604013/Telescope-debacle-devours-NASA-funds.html to http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20110605/NEWS01/110604013/Telescope-debacle-devours-NASA-funds.html

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James E. Webb
I couldn't find were the article discussed the man James Webb, or why it's named after him. If it's in there it should be more prominent. Pb8bije6a7b6a3w (talk) 15:01, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * James E. Webb was director of NASA from 1961 to 1968, during the time that the Apollo program went from a wild goal to a firmly designed, financed, and built project (Apollo 8 went around the Moon in Dec 2008, recall). Wwheaton (talk) 18:55, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

You mean 1968. 192.122.237.11 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:04, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

This should be made clear because I thought it was named after the recent US Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.242.58.79 (talk) 22:13, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Meter or metres?
Ton or tonne? This article has both. Hate that. Kortoso (talk) 22:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Poorly written
In the first three paragraphs alone, one may find mixed tense (will/is), excessive wordiness (exact synchrony - exact is not needed, something is either synchronous or not), superfluous hyphens (solar-orbit should not be hyphenated as orbit is a subjective noun modified by the adjective solar). On the norm, sentences are awkwardly constructed.

This 'style' is practiced throughout the document. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.252.184.41 (talk) 16:12, 2 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The "mixed tense" is chosen intentionally. In every sentence in which the future tense is used, these are cases in which the projected performance of the JWST is discussed. Since it isn't in space yet, these sentences must use the future tense.
 * BTW, please sign your contributions in the Wikipedia talk pages. Kortoso (talk) 23:00, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Cooling details needed
I added a note on the helium gas cooler to the MIRI section. However, I feel the article needs details on the environmental shield and how it achieves the required cooling to 40 K for the mirror side (Region 1). Reference mentions "passive methods used to cool the rest of the JWST" with no further details. The helium cooler is specifcially for the MIRI sensor and does not provide cooling for anything else, if I've read the paper correctly. What are these "passive methods"? The mirror side will face away from both the sun and the Earth, (effectively 4 K background?) so the assumption is that they are sufficient to re-radiate the small amount of heat (Ref states "very little") that gets through to the mirror side over time, despite the multiple shield layers. gives the most details on the structure and analysis of the sunshield layers, but no thermal figures outside of the 1400 Watts per square metre incident sunlight. -84user (talk) 13:06, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

File:James Webb Primary Mirror.jpg to appear as POTD soon
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:James Webb Primary Mirror.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on August 28, 2016. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2016-08-28. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 02:00, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Incorrect Infomation
To be exact the James Webb Telescope is not of a "Flagship-class space observatory" but it is part of NASA's ongoing Flagship program. Dictonary1 (talk) 03:38, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Reliability and failure modes
Given the reaction wheel failures on HST and Kepler - how reliable/redundant will the reaction wheels on JWST be ? What reliability analysis has been done on JWST ? What are the most likely failure modes ? - Rod57 (talk) 15:19, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Long-term coolant?
The text says, "It has been possible to maintain a temperature low enough through the design of the spacecraft to enable near-infrared observations without a supply of coolant."

Have they considered using thermoelectric cooling for the imaging element (The inverse of how electricity is generated in distant spacecraft)? If you stage these things, with larger layers cooling the smaller ones, you can make the tip of the "pyramid" horrendously cold. Certainly the sensor would stay a lot colder than cooling by mere clever spacecraft design.

The DC current necessary for driving a TEC is very low and easy to come by on the illuminated side of the shield, and a radiator to dump waste heat wouldn't have to be very large if it was kept in the shade. It's nearly absolute zero in out there when stuff is warmed only by starlight.

Yet I've never heard of anyone doing it like that, as a "degraded mode" secondary way to use the expensive, perfectly good instrument forever after the cryogenic liquid coolant is exhausted.

Hey, thanx!

--Verdana ♥ Bold 12:38, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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some confusing wording in fourth paragraph
"but not a replacement, because the capabilities are not identical" that's not the definition of 'replacement' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.102.199.171 (talk) 09:12, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

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Launch date, risk of slipping
Per this December 6, 2017 GAO report, the launch date is likely to slip past the March-June 2019 date announced in Sept 2017: https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-277T

 Preliminary Observations on the Management of Space Telescopes''' '''

See page 9:

JWST. The JWST project continues to make progress towards launch, but the program is encountering technical challenges that require both time and money to fix and may lead to additional delays, beyond a delay recently announced. While the project has made much progress on hardware integration and testing over the past several months, it also used all of its remaining schedule reserves to address various technical issues, particularly on the spacecraft element. In September 2017, the JWST project requested from the European Space Agency—who will contribute the Ariane V launch vehicle—a launch window from March to June 2019, or 5 to 8 months later than the planned October 2018 launch readiness date, established in 2011. The project based this request on the results of a schedule risk assessment that incorporated inputs from the contractor on expected durations of ongoing spacecraft element integration work and other challenges that were expected to increase schedule.

With the later launch window to June 2019, the project expected to have up to 4 months of new schedule reserves. '''However, shortly after requesting the revised launch window, the project learned from its contractor that up to another 3 months of schedule reserve use is likely, due to lessons learned from conducting deployment exercises of the sunshield, such as reach and access limitations on the flight hardware. As a result, and pending further examination of the schedule, the project now has approximately one month of schedule reserve to complete environmental testing of the spacecraft element and the final integration phase. The final integration phase is where the instruments and telescope will be integrated with the spacecraft and sunshield to form the completed observatory. As I previously noted, our work has shown the integration and test is the riskiest phase of development, where problems are most likely to be found and schedules slip. Given the risks associated with the integration and test work ahead, coupled with a level of schedule reserves that is currently well below the level stated in the procedural requirements issued by the NASA center responsible for managing JWST, additional delays to the project’s revised launch readiness date of June 2019 are likely''' As a result, the funding available under the Congressional cost cap of $8 billion may be inadequate as the contractor will need to continue to retain higher workforce levels for longer than expected to prepare the mission for a delayed launch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:C650:AC60:D501:90E6:1C25:71CE (talk) 00:07, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunate Simplification of the Earth-Moon System
Jsusky (talk) 18:40, 28 December 2017 (UTC)The Moon's orbit is inclined about 5 degrees relative to the Earth's orbit - the "L2 rendering" implies they are in the same plane:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L2_rendering.jpg

The rendering should be annotated stating the same, perhaps with a link to one of fthe following images:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earth-Moon.PNG

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lunar_Orbit_and_Orientation_with_respect_to_the_Ecliptic.tif

WIKI ARTICLES FOR CONTEXT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Orbit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon

Naming
I came to Wikipedia looking for an answer to the following question:

Why does the title of this telescope include a given name when its predecessor's did not?

In other words, why not simply "the Webb Space Telescope"? Alternatively, why wasn't the previous telescope named "the Edwin Hubble Space Telescope"?

I could not find anything in the article to address the naming history in this regard. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 17:16, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

What might end the mission

 * Given the problems HST and Kepler have had with their rate sensing gyros - how does the JWST design address the risk of failure ?
 * Over 10 years how much of the propellant is for station keeping (at L2), and how much for attitude control ? When propellant get low could it be allowed to drift from L2 and use the remainder just for attitude control ?
 * - Rod57 (talk) 23:43, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

50 K (−220 °C; −370 °F).
I see this line copied in the article. Is Kelvin not measured in degrees, like Celsius and Fahrenheit? Robin.lemstra (talk) 12:03, 23 October 2018 (UTC)


 * No. Talk pages are not really the place for simple and obvious questions like this, just read the Kelvin article next time.  White Whirlwind  咨   19:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Abbreviation/Shorthand
The acronym "JWST" as the official shorthand for the telescope strikes me as clunky and unwieldy. The obvious choice is to follow the custom of calling the Hubble Telescope "the Hubble" and call it "the Webb". This happens to be what NASA does itself:. I haven't done any surveys of common usage, but it seems the obvious and natural choice.

I don't know who first established "the JWST" on this article, but it ought to be changed. Given the visibility of the article, I'm floating this here before making any changes.  White Whirlwind  咨   19:20, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * From the JWST: "The James Webb Space Telescope, also called Webb or JWST" . However, calling it the Webb conflicts with the common name for the Internet (Web).  I think Webb Telescope would be the shortest abbreviation after JWST. However, I see no need to do that. Rowan Forest (talk) 20:06, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * That is a very weak argument: the link you provided (saying "Webb or JWST") comes from a website (I linked it in my comment too) that uses "Webb" repeatedly throughout the article, and never uses "JWST" (as far as I can see). If the homophony ambiguity was such a problem, why would they use it? The answer is simple: nobody is going to confuse the internet with a telescope.  White Whirlwind  咨   22:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Double your meds. Rowan Forest (talk) 22:52, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia forbids ad hominem comments (see WP:AVOIDYOU) as part of basic civility. Try to limit yourself to logical arguments in the future. Incivility is always disappointing, but it reinforces my sense that my logic is indeed strong here.  White Whirlwind  咨   06:30, 10 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The acronym JWST is very common usage in official web sites and documentation about the observatory. See the JWST web pages on the Space Telescope Science Institute web site, or the European Space Agency JWST pages, or the JWST user documentation and manuals. Aldebarium (talk) 19:41, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * indeed they do, how unfortunate. I think that is enough to say there's no consensus for any possible change, so I'll abandon my proposal for now.  White Whirlwind  咨   00:48, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Mirror size in feet and/or inches
Should we be using feet or inches for the non-metric size of a primary mirror? In this article, we used to have both, but that's been changed to mixed feet and inches (21 ft 4 in). Other articles use decimal feet (e.g. [Hubble Space Telescope|HST]] at 7.9 ft.) Astronomers traditionally use inches only (e.g. the 200-inch Hale Telescope). I think we should show inches. People don't talk about a 16 ft 8 inch telescope at Hale, or something similar for other telescopes. Not giving inches makes direct comparisons harder for the reader. But we should also be consistent. Fcrary (talk) 20:50, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The inch dimensions were used for older ground instruments, so perhaps they don't apply to spacecraft? I think a case could be made for using decimal feet, as is done at this site. The Hubble telescope data seems to do the same thing. Praemonitus (talk) 21:56, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Interesting question. I'm having trouble coming up with a strong argument either way. Inches was and still is common for small telescopes and old research telescopes, but inches is not a very useful measure above a couple dozen (I always have to think hard to figure out just how big the 200" Hale is). I think that if I had to do it all from scratch, I'd use mixed feet and inches as the non-metric measure for all telescopes on Wikipedia (including the Hale: I'd argue it needs "16 ft 8 inch" parenthetical): it's the value that would be most useful for those unfamiliar with the metric system. And as Praemonitus says, decimal feet is the common NASA conversion, and probably makes more sense for systems that were designed in metric. So, I'm not really helping. - Parejkoj (talk) 17:10, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Just for context, the JWST article originally gave the diameter in meters, with feet/inches and inches in parentheses. Someone took out the inches, on the grounds that it was redundant and unnecessary. I think giving inches is useful, since it allows easy comparisons with older, large telescopes and current, small (amateur) ones. It isn't a whole lot of extraneous information. I would, however, prefer decimal feet over feet/inches, but I wasn't suggesting removing the diameter in feet. So that would be "6.5-meter (21.33 ft; 256 in)" But, as was pointed out, this may not be consistent with ever article on telescopes. Fcrary (talk) 20:18, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * MOS:UNITS mandates SI first, as this is a scientific topic, with the imperial conversion in brackets. Personally I think that's too draconian, instead we should make the first unit the one used in the cited source, with the other in brackets. In most modern cases that will be metres, with older telescopes specified in inches or feet & inches. The vast majority of astronomical research literature specifies apertures in metres, as does our List of largest optical reflecting telescopes. For the 200-inch Hale, the dimension is part of the name, so not a good example or precedent. Modest Genius talk 17:40, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * No one is suggesting anything but metric as the main unit. It's simply a question of whether the parenthetical should include the diameter in inches. To me, it makes a comparison between things like JWST (256 in) and the 200-inch Hale telescope easier and more intuitive. Fcrary (talk) 20:18, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Meters and inches is best. Rowan Forest (talk) 23:16, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * That was not clear from the OP. I don't think it makes any difference whether the imperial conversion uses inches or feet & inches. Either is fine. Modest Genius talk 09:51, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
 * If the question is "do we include inches in addition to decimal feet, then I'd say absolutely, yes. But just inches seems less useful for non-metric people to get a sense of the actual size, particularly for people who don't commonly think about telescope sizes. - Parejkoj (talk) 17:16, 5 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I've just put this in. The original objection was the fact that it's not consistent with other articles, and I haven't heard anyone concerned about that. It's now meters, with decimal feet and inches in parenthesis. I only made the change to the lead; I think everything is metric in the body of the article. Fcrary (talk) 20:20, 5 July 2019 (UTC)


 * The length of my TV measured only in inches (42"), and the tyre rim diameters too. So, I think the inch is better than the pointless "foot".


 * —Yours sincerely, Soumyabrata 17:42, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

resolution
The angular resolution of a telescope is the wavelength divided by the linear aperture. The James Webb is bigger than the Hubble, but it's instruments see longer wavelengths. Consequently it does not have better angular resolution. Instead of writing that it has ""greatly improved resolution"", the article should say it has better resolution in the infrared.--Tedweverka (talk) 14:38, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Could we have a picture showing how the mirror folds up?
I know there are quite a lot of pictures in the article already, but maybe one could be squeezed in to illustrate this fairly important design feature. All this talk about it being made in 18 segments so it can fold up had me thinking it was something much more complicated than it actually is. At any rate, I couldn't find any good ones on Commons, so it would be nice if some kind person could upload a few there. Like the ones here or here, for example. 80.225.163.175 (talk) 03:09, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Article says v little about any thrusters on JWST
in particular what propellant they [each] use (that will run out in about 10 years). slide 26 says "* Dv maneuvers are provided by two redundant sets of 5 lb Secondary Combustion Augment Thrusters (SCATs) :  ¡ MMC-1 SCATs used for initial Mid Course Corrections (MCCs)   ¡ MMC-2 / SK SCATs used for final MCC and for station-keeping * Attitude control, and momentum unloading provided by 1 lb Monopropellant Rocket Engines (MREs) * Propulsion Subsystem contains tanks for 300 kg of propellant (fuel + oxidizer + pressurant)" and a diagram says there are 4 sets of dual MREs. - Rod57 (talk) 18:49, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Article could say more on what might end the mission
Currently just says 10 years of propellant (is that for both types of thruster MMC & MRE?)
 * Given the problems HST and Kepler have had with their rate sensing gyros &/or momentum wheels - how does the JWST design address the risk of failure ?
 * Over 10 years how much of the propellant is for station keeping (at L2), and how much for attitude control ? When propellant gets low could JWST be allowed to drift from L2 and use the remainder just for attitude control ? Can it send back data in all permitted observing orientations or does it need to reorient before sending data back (as on Kepler) ?
 * - Rod57 (talk) 19:04, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

History section
Tried to do some minor adjustments, but ended up adding sub headings in the History section and removing these images. It feels like that whole section is in dire need of an overhaul. I'm not at all sure if the division I came up with is any good or how correct they ended up. I did it mostly because I felt I had to do something and hopefully someone more knowledgeable can take over. As for the images I feel bad about removing them when the section really could use more illustrations and not less, but they didn't really fit in. I'm thinking that there might be some drawings of earlier iterations/concepts for the telescope or more diverse photos of the construction, that would illustrate things more clearly (perhaps even of boring budget meetings if nothing else). :) Again I don't feel like I can really contribute more than this. – Amphioxi (talk) 21:50, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

size
The size 1.32 m given is for the incircle diameter flat to flat. Ra-raisch (talk) 15:05, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

This gives an area of 1.50 m² for each segment and 18·1.50 m² = 27 m² ??? ((Taking 0.65 m as radius of circumcircle would give 1.10 m² each and 19.80 m² in total)). The curvature of the mirror does not seem thus strong to explain the discrepancy of given measures, or does it? Ra-raisch (talk) 11:06, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Power source
The information box just says power: 2000 Watts

If one of the pictures didn't have a description saying: "solar panel is in green", I wouldn't know that the telescope is powered by solar panels.

Maybe we could feature this more prominently? 18:29, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah you are right 😂 Md Athar drt (talk) 09:23, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Launch date delay
On Sept 28th [2017], news article announced launch date has been delayed from October 2018 to March-June 2019 https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-james-webb-space-telescope-to-be-launched-spring-2019

"NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope now is planning to launch between March and June 2019 from French Guiana, following a schedule assessment of the remaining integration and test activities. Previously Webb was targeted to launch in October 2018."

The date has been delayed to 31 March 2021 Md Athar drt (talk) 09:20, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

As of today April 8, 2021 the launch date remains October 31, 2021. (weather permitting)98.21.218.134 (talk) 17:28, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Will this ever launch its almost 25 years since it was planned
Has been delayed for almost 25 years now does anyone know if it really will launch in october

Answer:

It might. An article from Space.com from July 7, 2021 says that it just passed a key review ahead of launch this fall. However, according to the ESA statement quoted in the article "[t]he precise launch date following 31 October depends on the spaceport’s launch schedule and will be finalized closer to the launch readiness date".

Another article (different author, same magazine) suggested in June that it looked like it might be delayed until November.

Michaeltyu (talk) 23:25, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Activist op-ed
This is non-noteworthy and WP:UNDUE, having had no coverage in reliable sources. An op-ed (opinion piece) on a pop-sci magazine's website is not worthy of inclusion unless reliable sources cover this idea. Wikipedia is not for this sort of advocacy to rename the telescope. Crossroads -talk- 03:10, 17 March 2021 (UTC)


 * FWIW - seems my earlier edit re a "Scientific American" article was reverted - also seems the following discussion (copied below) may be relevant here on the "James Webb Space Telescope" article as well as on the "James E. Webb" article:



Copied from Talk:James E. Webb as follows:

-- Webb and homosexuality --

For now I am removing the re-written section on Webb and homosexuality. This is an attempt to link Webb to anti-homosexual policies during the 1950s. Webb may very well have been actively involved in rooting out gay people from government agencies, but that is the work of historians and investigative reports; it is not the work of Wikipedians (see: WP:PSTS). In the current paragraph which I have removed, the part that links Webb to direct involvement comes from a primary source, the "Memorandum from Stephen J. Spingarn with Note". While that document seems to implicate Webb on this issue, that assessment needs to be made by a historian or investigative reporter. In other words, it needs to come from a secondary source. A historian studying this subject may know more about this document than we do, and may better understand the context. I am not saying that XOR'easter doesn't understand the context or the document. I am saying XOR'easter is not allowed by Wikipedia to make those judgments. Those judgments can only come from secondary, reliable sources.

I, too, have been looking for sources to connect Webb to these allegations. I have also reached out to the editor who made the claim in this article originally (I haven't heard back yet from that editor). If and when a secondary reliable source can be found, then and only then can a paragraph like this exist in the article.

I hope my explanation makes sense. If it doesn't, please respond here. Sincerely, Kingturtle = (talk) 04:08, 26 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Webb joined the State Department during McCarthyism, and the Department was under considerable pressure from Congress to root out communists, anarchists and others deemed un-American and a security risk. Webb met with Truman in 1950 to discuss the administration's response to the Congressional hearings. As Undersecretary of State, Webb acted as intermediary between Truman and the Congressional subcommittee led by Senator Clyde R. Hoey that investigated "the employment of homosexuals in the Federal workforce." Carlisle Humelsine, an official in the State Department, prepared a memorandum stating that homosexuals were "characterized by emotional instability" and "unsuitable for employment" in that Department. The memorandum referred to unnamed "studies" that related the "rise of homosexuality with the accompanying decline of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman Empires". Webb then passed the material that had been prepared for him on to Hoey. Although the White House was not politically able to quell Congressional fervor, it implemented a strategy to emphasize the medical aspects and play down the security concerns of homosexuals in the government.


 * The Lavender Scare describes Webb's role as go-between for Truman and Hoey's subcommittee. I'm not a fierce devotee of the paragraph as written, but it's definitely a usable source; it and the Shibusawa article justify everything here, though of course phrasing is up for debate. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 06:24, 26 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I've been searching Newspapers.com for anything at all linking Webb to this, but haven't found anything yet. I am still trying. Kingturtle = (talk) 21:17, 26 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I am doubtful that contemporaneous newspapers would have much on the topic. The best references, judging from what we've seen so far, would probably be academic books and articles studying the events retrospectively. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 22:00, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

(and others): FWIW: seems this topic may be related to a recent (1 March 2021) issue of Scientific American which was added to the main James E. Webb article (but reverted several times by an ip editor without discussion or explanation on the talk-page) as follows:



Copied from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_E._Webb&diff=prev&oldid=1010170807

'In March 2021, a commentary in Scientific American'' urges NASA to rename the James Webb Space Telescope due to Webb's efforts while a NASA administrator, disclosed in 2015, to implement governmental policies in place at the time to purge LGBT individuals from the federal workforce. '''

NOTE: My original edit was subsequently improved by editor User:Randy Kryn => https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_E._Webb&diff=1010225981&oldid=1010170807

Hope this helps in some way - in any case - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 23:10, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm flexible at the moment re this concern about Webb, and would support whatever WP:CONSENSUS finally decides - Comments Welcome from other editors of course - iac - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 15:42, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The article on Webb himself is one matter, especially if multiple editors there want to cover what he did and this source is the only one being used for that right now, but this is much more tangential to the telescope itself, of which the name is itself only a small aspect. Crossroads -talk- 18:52, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

FWIW - latest WP:RS reference re the telescope renaming issue was published in the journal Nature - hope this helps in some way - iac - Stay safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 15:53, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

If there's an issue in the project management/public relations side of the project which means the telescope could be renamed, that's salient to an article on the telescope. Readers come to Wikipedia to get an overview on a subject, and a short section indicating that the project could be renamed and that a controversy exists (and what the topic of the controversy is) is not taking sides on an issue. A full discussion of the reasons behind the renaming could remain on the article for James E. Webb. Coverage in Nature's news section is enough to show that the concern is being investigated by NASA, even though the editorial in Scientific American alone may have needed more sources to back up that the public conversation was notable. Michaeltyu (talk) 21:25, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I've seen mention of the name change discussion on Scientific American and other mainstream media. The merits of the controversy are immaterial (I can understand the argument, but I don't think it's worth changing the name at this point), as it is still something that is worthy of mentioning, even in passing. I came here specifically to look for it, then headed to the talk page to see if there was a discussion about it. That in itself suggests there should be a short note about it. The Scientific American article is mentioned on James Webb's page in relation to the telescope, FWIW. 75.98.138.178 (talk) 17:06, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Just adding that it seems absurd not to acknowledge the naming controversy. Regardless of the merits of the allegations, the authors of the original Scientific American article included well-established and globally recognised astronomers, and the controversy has now recieved attention in Nature. This is not a minor/un-noteworthy issue but something being given legitimate attention by NASA and the astronomical community. The controversy pertains specifically to the naming of this telescope so it is not appropriate to confine it to the page on Webb himself. 00A86B (talk) 15:55, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Delay details and cites in lede
For reasons that escape me, the lede devotes an entire paragraph to iterating through many/most/all of the delays that have occurred in deployment of the JWST. This seems unnecessary. Merely stating that a long series of delays has taken place since development first began in 1996. The more in-depth coverage belongs in the article body, where it already exists. The lede is also littered with citations; my understanding is that non-controversial topics such as this should avoid cites in the lede, reserving them also for the body. Can anyone shed some clarity on these two issues? cheers. Anastrophe (talk) 06:38, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Could add Roman/WFIRST to comparison table
Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telescope is a wide field of view infrared space telescope, also with a coronagraph, to launch ~2027. - Rod57 (talk) 11:56, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Time to repoint to unplanned target of opportunity
"JWST requires 2 days to repoint for a disruptive target of opportunity" says The Gamow Explorer: ... p11. Not sure where this would be mentioned in the JWST article, or why it is as long as two days. - Rod57 (talk) 22:54, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

December 22 or 24
Well which one is it? Google and Wikipedia preview show 22 vs 24 on the page. B137 (talk) 20:17, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

It's the 24th B137 (talk) 20:20, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Cost
Any idea of cost and who's paying for it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.99.235.45 (talk) 04:15, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Cost and customer (payor) specifications
For consistency, would suggest cost and customer (payors) categories be placed at the top of page under general information about telescope. Much like government military equipment pages. 99.99.235.45 (talk) 04:30, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Upright image scaling
WP:IMGSIZE states that using  image scaling is discouraged "except with very good reason", as this disregards the readers' preferences for image thumbnail size. in this article's infobox, and said "updated". This is not even a reason, let alone a very good reason, and this is far from the first time you have done this. I have made it clear to you on numerous occasions in the past, whether it be through edit summaries or editors' notes you certainly have read, that you need to use upright image scaling according to MOS:IMGSIZE, e.g.  and. Why do you continue to disregard and ignore these concerns? — Molly Brown (talk) 23:12, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Consensus is clearly on your (our) side on this one; as long as CRS-20 refuses to WP:ENGAGE, and even refuses to write edit summaries, I think it's perfectly reasonable to revert, since it goes directly against the Manual of Style, as well as local consensus of other editors. Leijurv (talk) 08:56, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Halo orbit and quotes
There's been some back and forth editing (by myself and Rjdeadly) on the use of quotes when describing JSWT's halo orbit. I don't think putting orbit in quotes is reasonable or consistent. No, a halo orbit isn't an orbit around a common center of mass. But it is the term used in the technical literature to describe the periodic motion of an object around a Lagrange point. We even have an article on the subject of halo orbits which uses orbit in the title. And the term, halo orbit, (without quotes) are used in articles like Lagrange point and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. If we put quotes around orbit in this article, it would be both contrary to technical usage and inconsistent with other articles about spacecraft in halo orbits. Does anyone else have an opinion on the subject? Fcrary (talk) 01:30, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Scare quotes aren't the best way to communicate to the reader that JWST's halo orbit isn't what's usually considered an orbit; they simply indicate doubt or skepticism without helping the reader understand why. Why not add an explanatory footnote on the first use of the term? Schazjmd   (talk)  01:44, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Even though there is no "center of mass" as one would commonly understand it for an orbit, putting "orbit" in quotes is not needed. As a compromise, perhaps a larger selection of the mentions of "halo orbit" should be linked to halo orbit? That way it's clear that this isn't a "normal" "orbit" but rather a "halo orbit". Leijurv (talk) 01:54, 15 November 2021 (UTC)


 * It is wrong to put the word orbit inside quotation marks when describing the telescope circling the LaGrange point. The word orbit means "to go in a circle around" or "to circle around a thing" – or in the case of a LaGrange point orbit, "to circle around a position or place". Orbiting is precisely the action of the telescope around the LaGrange point. I can't even understand why somebody would think it appropriate to use quotation marks in this context; it suggests a flawed understanding of the term orbit, where the editor appears to believe that the term can only be valid when describing the circling of a physical object. O&#39;Dea (talk) 03:58, 22 December 2021 (UTC)


 * On the NASA James Webb Telescope website, there is a visual representation of the telescope's orbit round the sun at Animation of Webb's Orbit. Surely it would be better if the article could include something like this to give, even lay readers, some idea of what the telescope's actual orbit will be; or, if this is not possible, put in a link to the NASA page. --Samesawed (talk) 16:22, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Orbital parameters in infobox - Relative to Earth and/or SE-L2 - template issues
The following webpage,

https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-observatory-characteristics/jwst-orbit

at the presumably unimpeachable Space Telescope Science Institute website, says in its first section:

"The distance of JWST from the L2 point varies between 250,000 to 832,000 km, as shown in Figure 1". That figure (illustration) appears a few paragraphs later, in the section titled: "Rationale for the orbit dimensions".

This contradicts the current Perigee and Apogee numbers in the Orbital Parameters section of the article Infobox, which are sourced to this webpage:

https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/j/jwst

In that webpage, Figure 8 shows the Halo orbit Apogee and Perigee numbers as now given in the Infobox. As far as I can tell, however, the actual text of that (very long) webpage does not explicitly give the Apogee/Perigee numbers; they are only shown in the illustration (Figure 8). That image is credited to NASA, but I haven't been able to find it on any NASA or JWST website.

The pair of numbers in each of the two sources show a very noticeable discrepancy, especially the Apogee. I am suspicious of the (seemingly) coincidental equivalence of the Figure 8 Apogee number (1.5 million km) with the commonly stated distance of L2 from Earth.

Suggestions to resolve this question? DonFB (talk) 05:05, 24 December 2021 (UTC)


 * That's tricky, and we may need someone who knows how to edit infobox templates. (I don't, and it's used by too many articles for me to want to experiment with...) First, the template is incorrectly using "perigee" and "apogee", which isn't correct unless we want it to give the distance from the Earth. The NASA numbers you found are the distance from the L2 point, not the Earth. It isn't clear what the apogee and perigee distances are, since we don't know if that 832,000 km maximum distance from L2 is towards or away from the Earth. The parameter in the infobox itself, is orbital_periapsis and orbital_apoapsis. I guess the template somehow uses the orbital_reference or orbital_regime parameters to decide whether to say perigee or perihelion or what. It looks like the logic in the template can't handle halo orbits around Lagrange points, but I don't know how to fix that. Fcrary (talk) 18:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I took a look at articles on spacecraft in L1 halo orbits, and they have similar problems. For Advanced Composition Explorer, the infobox gives the minimum and maximum distance from the Sun, but calls it perigee and apogee, not perihelion and apohelion. For Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, it gives the distances from the L1 point, but again calls it apogee and perigee. Fcrary (talk) 18:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)


 * There is a nice paragraph describing the halo orbits in Solar and Heliospheric Observatory that might be adapted here. It points out that the halo orbit is perpendicular to the Earth-L2 line, so the variation in distance to earth should be minimal. I would suggest adding a footnote to the Perigee and Apogee values explaining that the values reference the spacecraft's distance to L2, not Earth, and also requesting a fix to the template. --agr (talk) 19:03, 24 December 2021 (UTC)


 * The Infobox can be edited to make it appear as this:


 * Periapsis altitude	374,000 km (232,000 mi)
 * Apoapsis altitude	1,500,000 km (930,000 mi)


 * This can be done by deleting the following parameter and its value from the Infobox:


 * apsis             = gee


 * Perhaps not an absolutely ideal solution, but seems to be a way to avoid misuse of "Perigee/Apogee" nomenclature in this particular case.


 * As currently edited, the Infobox correctly identifies that the Peri and Apo terminology apply to:


 * "Reference system....Sun–Earth L2 orbit"
 * However, the string value for that param might be reworded to be more clear: "Reference system.......Orbit around Sun-Earth L2".


 * The real problem that remains is the discrepancy I identified in the information from two seemingly reliable cited [correction: the STSci source was not cited for the Peri- and Apo- numbers--DonFB] sources, STSci and ESA, which give significantly different numbers for the minimum and maximum distances of Webb Telescope from L2. I once again will voice my suspicion of the 1.5 million km number shown in Figure 8 on the cited Eoportal.org webpage, as that number is the same as the full distance of the telescope from Earth.
 * A possible adjustment to the template could be replacement or supplementation of the word "altitude" with "distance" in the appropriate position in the code. Such a modification could allow an editor to select "distance" when referring to Halo orbital params and "altitude" for conventional celestial body orbital params. When specifying Halo orbital parameters, "altitude" can mislead people into thinking it refers to height above the Sun or planet, moon, etc. rather than--as in this case--distance from an intangible point in space (Lagrange). DonFB (talk) 16:37, 25 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Nasa have provided an animation of the orbit, here Webb Orbit. This gives a better picture to visualise what is going on. (I see that it is now in the article). --Samesawed (talk) 16:45, 25 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Ok, I think I have mostly resolved my difficulty with the numbers, caused by what I believe is a perceptual error by a previous editor which has gone unrecognized. My conclusions are based on my assumption that whoever added the minimum/maximum numbers was using the Figure 8 diagram from the Eoportal.org source (the numbers do not appear in the text of that webpage, only in the diagram). The numbers represent the full measurement of the elongated and squeezed dimensions of the halo orbit. Each number should have been divided in half to give the (theoretically) true values for the minimum and maximum distances between the position of L2 and the telescope. (I am not sure, however, if division by 2 is completely correct. The Figure 8 diagram gives the appearance that L2 is not in the center of the Halo orbit. Mathematician-astronomers reading this may want to chime in) Nevertheless, using the full (undivided) dimensions appears to be a mistake. Taking half of each dimension shown in Figure 8 reduces the otherwise very big discrepancies between this article's representation of the Eoportal pair of numbers and the STSci pair of numbers. Using the full values from Figure 8 (currently shown in the Infobox) gives discrepancies with STSci of 125k km for perigee (periapsis) and 668k km for apogee (apoapsis). Using half of each Figure 8 value gives discrepancies of 63k km for perigee and 82k km for apogee. Not exactly zero discrep, but within the realm of reasonability.


 * I'm leaning toward adding the STSci citation, because its numbers are given very specifically in the text and come from a decidedly authoritative source. Doing so, though, opens the question of which set of numbers to use. One thing seems certain: the numbers now in the Infobox must be changed, either by dividing each in half, or replacing them with the STSci numbers.


 * I'm actually not troubled by the use of "Apogee/Perigee" in this context, but they can be changed to "Apoapsis/Periapsis" with the little kludge I showed above, if anyone is inclined to do so. DonFB (talk) 18:39, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Error (or mismatch) in the 'Planned deployment timeline' diagram...
This diagram says that the 'Gimbaled Antenna Assembly' takes place at L+120min, but the official JWST Goddard page ('Where is Webb?') lists that activity as occurring one day after launch. This may be a change to the schedule since the diagram was created.

Had me worried for a moment, watching at 9.5 hours.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeterReid (talk • contribs) 22:16, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Excellent work
Thanks, editors. As usual for a main-page news feature, it's very well managed. Just one query: "3.9 times the distance to the Moon)". The Moon's orbit is highly elliptical; so should "average" be inserted somewhere? Tony (talk)  11:18, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Lagrange reference 34
The Lagrange point hyperlink for reference 34 appears broken. A possible alternative is the NASA web page at https://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/webb-l2.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:2C9D:5B00:5C62:9CD9:5E41:3DB2 (talk) 17:19, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

MIssion logo
Why isn't the actual logo of the mission used like with every other simmilar article? https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/science_exploration/space_science/webb/22516096-3-eng-GB/Webb_pillars.jpg Julius503 (talk) 13:30, 23 December 2021 (UTC)


 * The logo in the infobox is the logo that was on the fairing. It is the "actual" logo. --2603:8000:CF00:606D:9941:9A3B:E14A:C93 (talk) 22:45, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Webb - time
"JWST's infrared capabilities are expected to let it see back in time to the first galaxies forming just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang."

Questionable whether valid.

See: https://www.google.com/search?q=time+is+not+linear&gl=us&pws=0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:3D08:6784:5C00:F9E2:E11D:88D9:430A (talk) 01:09, 5 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Age in cosmology is measured by redshift of atomic spectra,, which is a linear quantity. If you are aware of a significant body of scientific theories based on non-linear time, with sufficient reliable sources (see WP:RS), it might make an interesting article, but not here.--agr (talk) 13:15, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 04:06, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
 * JWST as seen from the ESC-D Cryotechnic upper stage.png
 * Based on the information at the discussion page, this bot notification is moot. An appropriate license exists, and the nominator rescinded their deletion request. DonFB (talk) 04:43, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The nomination has been closed as keep.—agr (talk) 03:33, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Who 'operates' the JWST? - How should we summarise in the Infobox
According to NASA's own pages, the JWST "is an international collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA)", just as the Hubble was "an international collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA)". The latter is reflected in the operator-entry for Hubble. So why should JWST be solely 'operated' by NASA? -Muhali (talk) 21:59, 27 December 2021 (UTC)


 * It's true that the telescopes were collaboratively developed by NASA, ESA and Canada. That fact is shown in the two articles. However, the "Operator" function is a separate matter, and sources explain it clearly. I think the Hubble article needs a correction. The "Operator" parameter in the article Infobox has no referencing. Here are available references:


 * "Here are some basic facts about the telescope and the mission, courtesy of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which operates Hubble for NASA:"
 * https://www.space.com/15892-hubble-space-telescope.html


 * And,


 * "The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is located in Baltimore, Maryland and oversees Hubble’s science operations. STScI manages the selection process of proposals to use Hubble, schedules the resulting observations, processes the data, and so forth."
 * https://www.nasa.gov/content/about-facts-hubble-faqs


 * Those sources do not refer to ESA as an operator of Hubble. Likewise, the referencing for Webb does not describe ESA as an operator. Without explicit referencing of ESA as a Hubble operator, ESA should be deleted from the Operator parameter in that article's Infobox. DonFB (talk) 23:38, 27 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree, and I'll change the entry in the Hubble article. Fcrary (talk) 01:50, 28 December 2021 (UTC)


 * This is most definitely a misunderstanding. The Webb and Hubble are both operated from STScI, but ESA has staff at STScI specifically to operate Webb and Hubble and oversea the selection process of science proposals. ESA's group at STScI is lead by Antonella Nota.
 * https://www.stsci.edu/who-we-are/leadership/antonella-nota --KLGerads (talk) 16:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Institutionally speaking, STScI operates the telescopes, so that's correct information. You would be free to add some text that mentions international participation in the collection and distribution of the data. DonFB (talk) 05:12, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
 * That would be fine somewhere else in the article. But this was about the infobox. That's supposed to contain short, few-word or single-number summary information. A longer description of how JWST is operated belongs in the body of the article, not the infobox. Fcrary (talk) 03:40, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * That was my intention, though unstated: in the body, not the Infobox. DonFB (talk) 06:33, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * A reliable source states that the operator is STScI, not ESA. Note (No original research): Wikipedia does not publish original thought. All material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not clearly stated by the sources themselves. Aoito (talk) 06:14, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, the infobox is supposed to be a very brief summary, so in this case, the operator refers to the primary operator. Looking at other NASA/ESA collaborations, that seems to be the case. I'm more familiar with planetary science missions, so I'll use those as examples. There were NASA instruments on the ESA Rosetta mission, and the US instrument teams were involved in mission operations. But the infobox for Rosetta only lists ESA as the operator. On the Cassini-Huygens mission. ESA and ASI are listed as operating the Huygens probe, despite US instrument teams also being involved. And for the Cassini orbiter, there were European instruments on the spacecraft, but the operator is listed as NASA/JPL. In fact, Cassini was a distributed operations mission. So if we wanted to list all the institutions involved in operating it, we'd have to say JPL/Univ. Arizona/GSFC/SSI/Univ. Colorado/Univ. Heidelberg/Imperial College/IRF/SwRI/APL/Univ. Iowa, which would be far too much detail for an infobox. Fcrary (talk) 03:57, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Above in this thread, I show a couple of RS that explicitly refer to "operates/operations" by STScI. The existing ref for the Operator param in the Infobox also speaks of the STScI "Operations Center". Again, details about the extensive international collaboration can go in the body, but the referencing is unequivocal for this article's description, in the Infobox or anywhere else, of STScI as the designated "Operator". DonFB (talk) 06:33, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Halo orbit fact correct but misleading?
At the end of the section "Sunshield protection", speaking of the field of regard, it says the telescope "can see all of the sky over a period of six months, the amount of time it takes to complete its halo orbit around L2." The NASA web page https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html does state that the halo orbit period is "about six months", but isn't this a misleading coincidence, with the real reason being that in six months the L2-Earth-Sun axis swings through 180 degrees, and this is what changes the telescope's field of view, not the halo orbit? 118.102.85.56 (talk) 18:02, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes. I'll change that. Fcrary (talk) 19:49, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Article structure - eg Mission/History/Background
The article lacks a comprehensive logic for its structure, there is for example considerable overlap between the section "History" and "Mission". If I look for example at similar articles like the Cassini-Huygens or Voyager 1, the "History" is either focused on and under "Background" and the "Mission" is the Mission-progress, or "History" includes Mission-progress. A clear distinction between history and mission (as in Plan) or mission (as in Progress) needs to be implemented. Otherwise its for example not clear were to put new developments (see deployment e.g.). Nsae Comp (talk) 10:46, 4 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Yes - the subsections in Background/History don't make clear if they are overlapping, or sequential in time. I've added dates to some subsections that seem part of a chronology. Less ambiguous section headings help direct new additions. I've split Mission with Mission progress - from launch onwards, and moved a subsection to match. May need more sorting. - Rod57 (talk) 13:53, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Launch and mission length - content has been deleted
Several recent edits by an individual are inappropriate and not respectful of others’ contributions. Important and relevant information has now been omitted, which lowers the overall quality of the article and does not inform the reader as well.

For example, the possibly extended lifetime of the entire JWST mission — an important development — is now barely explained and is not well-supported by the text and internal wiki links. Before these edits, there was a better description that was detailed, factual, well-informed and well referenced, which is now diminished by an excessive zeal for condensation to suit an individual’s personal style. Theophilus Reed (talk) 01:22, 12 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Please be clearer - who's edits, or starting when ? Maybe list some diffs that you don't like. - Why not revert the worse of the edits ? - Rod57 (talk) 13:58, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Should servicing be left as-is or separate short subsection?
Servicing is kinda a big deal for Webb, a lot was made of its lack of serviceability (which wasnt made, for Hubble or others, of course). As a result there's probably elevated interest in serviceability, and such. But the previous text was outdated. I've now updated it because the talk has changed since launch. Cite is from an associate administrator at NASA talking to media, FWIW.

My question is a simple one - leave as-is, or move into its own section "Servicing" at the end of "Features"? I ask mainly because it's probably an area of considerable interest for Webb, so easily found would help. But also trying to avoid proliferation of small sections too. What's the right balance? Please feel free to move it if anyone thinks it's better. FT2 (Talk 21:49, 11 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Subsections can be very helpful : to readers to find content, and to editors to suggest where to add updates. - IMO "servicing options" deserves a subsection (under design/Features?) - Rod57 (talk) 14:02, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Question about a sentence - is speed increasing or decreasing
The article has this: "... therefore most of its flight will be at a slightly slower speed than the final speed for L2 orbit." Is this true? Isn't it going to be losing speed as it goes out to L2? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:32, 26 December 2021 (UTC)


 * So it is probably going faster now than it will be in the L2 orbit. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 17:23, 27 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I think the reverse is accurate: it's going a little slower now than it will be when it arrives. In the first NASA blog about the successful first midcourse burn, there is this key sentence: "Therefore, we ease up to the correct velocity in three stages". I can see how the phrase "ease up" could be interpreted in opposite ways: like taking your foot off the gas pedal (ease up)....but reading the blog, I'm pretty sure they mean they are easing into a slightly higher ("up") speed. They talk a lot about how it's basically impossible to decelerate, so that's why they started out by going a little slower than necessary. The NASA phrase "we ease up to the correct velocity" is on the page of their followup blog, "More Than You Wanted to Know About Webb’s Mid-Course Corrections!" which is cited in our article for the sentence under discussion ("final speed for L2 orbit") and includes the full text of the first blog where the phrase appears. So, NASA does make it sound like the final entry to the halo orbit is the result of small speed increases, which would mean the 'scope is traveling at "a slightly slower speed" on the way there. I'm going to keep my eye out for any other specific official info about this. DonFB (talk) 18:51, 27 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Bubba73 is correct. (The NASA blog sounds poorly worded) The velocity relative to Earth is decreasing (except during engine burns) as it leaves LEO on the 30 day trip to L2. It's being thrown uphill and slowed (a lot) by the Earth's gravity. NASA/ESA don't want to let JWST go over the "top of the hill" at L2 as it can't come back, and will be lost/unusable. As JWST gets closer to L2 they can see how far short it is falling and can give another (hopefully smaller) nudge to get it just short of the top. Once almost there, occasional nudges will keep it there (in its halo orbit). - Rod57 (talk) 14:18, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

original or free source for this image?
This page contains an infographic on mirror alignment that's incredibly helpful, especially for those seeking exact information. Its on many othrr web pages, surely came off some NASA document or presentation. But I can't find the source, so I don't know for sure if its free, or cited.

Help tracking down this item? Or citing the data in it, and creating a free version if by chance it isnt? FT2 (Talk 04:45, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Can't see when choice of Ariane 5 launcher was made - or when the telescope dimensions were fixed.
Article does not say when choice of Ariane 5 launcher was made - or when the telescope folded dimensions were fixed. Was it before the 2003 contract with TRW ? Presumably it was well before the ESA MOU in 2004. In 2002 it sounds like there were three very different designed being studied (GSC, TRW, Ball, maybe LM). When was segmented mirror mooted, and finally chosen ? ESA was involved since 1996, but was that on instruments, or for launching on Ariane 5 (agreed 2003/4?) ? - Rod57 (talk) 14:37, 14 January 2022 (UTC)


 * For most launches both are the same time since it's the same decision. A satellite is designed to fit a particular launcher. Jim.henderson (talk) 01:42, 16 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Not necessarily. Europa Clipper didn't get a decision about its launch vehicle until very late in the development process. Discovery missions are never given a decision about the launch vehicle until sometime around the Preliminary Design Review. By that time, the basic configuration of the spacecraft is pretty much set in stone. Fcrary (talk) 03:21, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Citations in lead
There are lots of citations in the lead here, including in the middle of sentences; pretty much all of these seem to be cited later in the article. Per MOS:LEADCITE, might it make sense to get rid of a lot of these? Oeoi (talk) 21:08, 26 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Agree. I think each of us can feel free to delete those that are duplicates.   One technical problem might be removing named references that are referred to later.  This might require moving the contents of some references.  LouScheffer (talk) 15:22, 28 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Started work on this. Fell free to contribute...   LouScheffer (talk) 17:18, 28 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Down to last 4 references, all in last paragraph, that seem not to be mentioned in article. Three refer to delays caused by the pandemic, one to problems with the Ariane rocket (in particular questions about the fairing).  I think the pandemic delays could be reduced to one reference, and the potential fairing problems omitted in the lead paragraph(s) as not important enough in the grand story.  Any other opinions?  LouScheffer (talk) 03:02, 29 March 2022 (UTC)


 * OK, lead cleanup finished, I think. Only issue referred to in the lead but not the article, and hence needing a reference, was the delays caused by the pandemic.  LouScheffer (talk) 15:21, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Thoughts on reworking the instrument section to be more accessible
JWST has a diverse set of instruments, each of which has many modes which can be used for a range of different science cases. At the moment the description of the instruments is very technical and includes a lot of details about collaborations and contractors. I wonder if it might improve the article to have a descriptions be in a bit more simple terms and move some of the details into the pages of the instruments themselves, that way the broad summary can be understood by everyone. Some of the instrument pages already have these basic summaries, I just think these would be better in the main page than the current text. There is also currently little connection of various instruments to scientific goals, adding that might give some useful context. I would keep the major partners in each description. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LazyAstronomer (talk • contribs) 05:30, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I support the idea of accessible language to more fully explain the "connection of various instruments to scientific goals", with referencing, of course. DonFB (talk) 05:51, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how we could improve the connection between the instruments and the scientific goals. Looking at the selected Cycle 1 and Early Release observations, it looks like each one of the instruments contributes significantly to all of the goals. Fcrary (talk) 18:16, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Some examples of the major instrument modes could be given. For example take NIRISS, the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph. As the section stands now it doesn't attempt to explain what slitless spectroscopy is or why it is interesting. One could talk about the wide field slitless mode which will be used to make blind spectroscopic surveys of galaxies, complimenting NIRCam's longer wavelength slitless spectroscopy and NIRSpec's targeted spectroscopy. Then there is the single object slitless mode, which was designed around transit spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres. The non-redundant aperture masking mode is another unique feature of NIRISS, which has applications in high contrast imaging of giant planets and stellar companions. And so on. Each instrument has many modes of operation, and I don't think that is really reflected in the current description. LazyAstronomer (talk) 13:33, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
 * There are separate articles on each of the instruments, all linked from this articles instruments section. I think those articles are the place for all the details of the various modes and their uses. Fcrary (talk) 18:31, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
 * But what I'm suggesting is that it should be the other way around. At the moment it has incredibly niche details are in these descriptions (like three sentences dedicated to filter wheels). But the actual meat of describing the instrument (the modes), is not included. LazyAstronomer (talk) 08:40, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Then we should improve the articles on the instruments. That would be consistent with other articles on NASA spacecraft. The article on the Juno spacecraft only has two to five sentence descriptions of each of the instruments, with links to the instrument articles. The Hubble Space Telescope article doesn't even describe the instruments; it just has a list of them (names only) and links to the instrument articles. Fcrary (talk) 18:33, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't feel that the description of the instruments is overly technical and that the sections contain too many details. The descriptions give a good general overview of each of the instruments which are very complex and have a lot details relating to them.  I feel the writer did a good job at covering these details without becoming overly complicated.  Just my opinion though. KittyHawkFlyer (talk) 23:48, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Add this! Red shift at 12 billion light years (or more) in terms of spectral lines
Where (in the near infrared) would you find the classic sodium 589+ nm lines if the source were 12 billion light years away, or where are the Fraunhofer lines of common elements at the limits of the James Webb? Why do you see blue objects with a telescope that sees only orange light and longer wavelenths? Sudzydoogiedawg (talk) 11:59, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Micrometeoroid strike
One of the mirror segments has suffered a micrometeoroid strike: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/webb-telescope-micrometeoroid-impact-mirror-segment/ on 01:43, 9 June 2022 (UTC). --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs)

First light?
What is first light in this context? During testing, or what? kencf0618 (talk) 15:16, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Consensus on photo gallery
with the photographs that come from the telescope being released tomorrow, i wanted to get consensus on integrating a gallery in either this article or a separate that shares some notable images from the telescope with summaries. of course the notion of "notable" will need consensus, but surely it's worth thinking about. Ayyydoc (talk) 18:33, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
 * For sure the first released photo is notable in its own right regardless of subject. All we need to consider are possible copyright issues.OrewaTel (talk) 03:19, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
 * A very good idea, a separate article may be best as tbe jwst art. is already quite large Sudzydoogiedawg (talk) 13:23, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Photos are public domain as works by NASA, so no copyright issues. The first photos are notable, so I've added a gallery; once the number of photos will grow, only most notable will be in this article, similarly with the Hubble article. Artem.G (talk) 13:45, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Please consider adding an Hubble image of the same spot alongside the JWST image for comparison Threecthreek (talk) 09:23, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * FWIW - Comparison of images between "JWST", "HST" (and others) are noted in one of my published "NYT" comments (7/12/2022) at => https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/12/science/webb-telescope-pictures.html#permid=119301455 - and also on my talk-page at => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Drbogdan#JWST - as well as at => https://www.universetoday.com/155686/now-we-can-finally-compare-webb-to-other-infrared-observatories/ - and especially the interactive comparison views of JWST and HST at "NBC News"=> https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/compare-photos-nasas-james-webb-space-telescope-hubble-space-telescope-rcna37875 (also, at "ABC News") - might be worth adding such interactive comparison views between JWST and HST to the "main article" but not sure how to do this at the moment - help from other Editors with this Welcome of course - in any case - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 12:07, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * UPDATE - Request for Technical Help with this is at => "Village pump (technical)/Archive 198" - Drbogdan (talk) 12:58, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Date format?
Why is this article on an American Telescope using DMY format? It should use Month Day, Year. -- Rockstone  Send me a message!  01:53, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
 * NASA (and spaceflight in general) tend to DMY. MOS:DATETIES mentions US military as one example, spaceflight is another. See archives of WT:SPACEFLIGHT for further discussion. Leijurv (talk) 05:41, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

This is a talk page
This is not the article and must be treated differently. Recently an editor changed one of the photos in the article. This change was reverted but that is not the point here. Any discussion as to the better photo should be in the Consensus on photo gallery section. The problem is that the editor also changed the photo reference on this page. It is correct to change photos and edit sentences in the article but on the talk page you should add another post explaining the changes that you want making. The result was that a post made and signed by user:Drbogdan was altered to say something that he never wrote. The change here was, quite correctly, reverted restoring Drbogdan's post. Editing another editor's post on a talk page is misrepresentation and reverting any post on a talk page is normally wrong.

The result of the incorrect procedure is that we no longer have an explicit record of the substituted photo and so we are unable to judge which photo is more appropriate.OrewaTel (talk) 22:24, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
 * You realize that was a bot that made an automated change, not an editor, right? - Aoidh (talk) 22:30, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

"The sunshield was designed to be folded twelve times"
Can u even fold something more than 7-8 times? This whole unquoted piece of text sounds suspicious Cambr5 (talk) 22:35, 18 July 2022 (UTC)


 * It's a concertina fold - Have a look here: https://johnrwalker.com.au/large-foldout-drawing-books/ First image shows a piece of paper folded 26 times Moons of Io (talk) 00:36, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

distant objects are young, not old
in the introduction of the article, it says "...its greatly improved infrared resolution and sensitivity allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for..."

The further away something is, the closer it is to the Big Bang (both spatially and in time). For example, an object that is 1 light year away will appear to us as it was 1 year ago, meaning that we see a younger version of it. In earlier corrections of this type of error on wikipedia, we changed the phrasing from "oldest"/"older" to "earliest"/"earlier". ("Ancient" is a synonym for "old".)

Suggestion: We change the phrase to "...its greatly improved infrared resolution and sensitivity allow it to view objects too early, distant, or faint for..." · · · Omnissiahs hierophant (talk) 15:29, 21 July 2022 (UTC)


 * i just updated it myself, since why wait for reply when i know i am right. if people have problems with that, we can maybe discuss it here. · · · Omnissiahs hierophant (talk) 15:57, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Conspiracy theories
"There’s a wide range of inane theories and speculations about the new Webb images’ origins, with some claiming that the pictures were created by CGI, Photoshop, Hollywood special effects, or some combination of all of the above. Some are even saying there might be a more diabolical reason behind Webb, suggesting that it could be weaponized against people on Earth." Doug Weller talk 09:19, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

I heard something like this lifted from Facebook. Are we at the stage where if there isn't a conspiracy theory the subject itself may not exist... Edmund Patrick – confer 12:52, 16 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Why should these idiotic claims be in the article? People can believe in whatever they want, but if you notice it and include it into the article it would give their moronic views more credit as they would say "hey, even wikipedia agrees with us!". Artem.G (talk) 13:11, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
 * It's up to people here to decide. Doug Weller  talk 13:31, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The only source is a non-notable website saying 'how about those wackos, eh?' Not worth mentioning in an encyclopedic article. Bkatcher (talk) 06:21, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

A new film challenges naming process for Webb telescope needs to be added to article
I have a passing interest in astronomy. I know 9 WOC who are astrophysicists, most of them African American and Native American and trained at Fisk University under a renowned Native American Astrophysicist there. But I don't have time today and want to insure someone might consider adding a passage under CONTROVERSY about the Jul 21, 2022 Wired article on the naming controversy and the lavender scare. The documentary is available on YouTube. https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-film-challenges-the-james-webb-telescopes-controversial-name/ sheridanford (talk) 14:47, 21 July 2022 (UTC). I am simply going to add the citation after Lavender scare in that section for now.
 * At a time when the entire US Government Sector had homophobic attitudes, the Chief of NASA failed to speak up against them. I say US Government because NASA was a US agency. Many other Governments around the World had the same problem. Well we have learnt a lot since then and if a Chief Administrator supported those policies now, then it would indeed be a crisis. But then? It seems strange to single out James Webb for criticism. The current controversy may continue and over time may become notable. Alternatively the 'victim' culture may move on to a new subject and we can concentrate on the fantastic results that this telescope produces. In any case this article should be about technical excellence not some passing fad. OrewaTel (talk) 07:35, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Help with HST / JWST comparison images
Seems an editor "User:Yann" has changed, without "WP:CONSENSUS", aligned comparison images from the "HST" and "JWST" - particularly, the aligned comparison images, "File:NASA-HubbleSpaceTelescope-DeepField-2017.jpg" with the equivalent "File:NASA-JWST-FirstDeepField-20220712.png" - to non-aligned image(s) instead (examples => "File:Main image deep field smacs0723.png" or "File:Webb's First Deep Field.jpg" ) - for related details, please see talk at => https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Drbogdan#Webb's_First_Deep_Field - and => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Drbogdan#Comparison_of_images

Articles of concern include:

1. "James Webb Space Telescope"

2. "Webb's First Deep Field"

3. "Galaxy cluster"

4. "SMACS J0723.3–7327"

5. "List of deep fields"

6. "First light (astronomy)"

hope this can be sorted out - in any case - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 15:42, 22 July 2022 (UTC)


 * ✅ - (and others) - Concerns now seem to have been solved (with a newly cropped image => "File:Webb's First Deep Field (adjusted).jpg") - for additional details, see => "User talk:Huntster" - in any case - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 12:13, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Useless table in the History section
I tried to remove this table from History, but was reverted. My reasoning is that the table is useless: it's some random list of 'major' milestones that shows nothing without a text. For example, what is MOU? Why is it important? CSA also participates in the project, but not mentioned in the table. There are a lot of gaps, like 1996-2001, 2011-2016, 2016-2021, does this fact says that nothing important happened between these dates?

And besides, text is much more informative than a collection of dates, why clutter article with the table?


 * When I first saw the table, I also thought it was not very useful. In particular, as you mentioned, I bristled at the needless "MoU" jargon. Upon revisiting the table, I find that it is actually a handy quick-view of several Milestones. I still believe MoU should be spelled out, regardless of its tooltip link. I note that the table is labeled Major milestones, so that seems to offer a reasonable explanation why "gaps" exist. I don't feel strongly one way or another about keeping the table, but I offer these thoughts as an editor whose opinion evolved on the issue. DonFB (talk) 05:01, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * MoU means 'memorandum of understanding'. It is an agreement between institutions. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 21:58, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I know, but it is still not obvious that the MoU is a "major milestone". Artem.G (talk) 06:00, 22 July 2022 (UTC)


 * The MoU (which should be spelled out) is the formal start of ESA's involvement in the mission. I think that's a major milestone. Fcrary (talk) 21:38, 25 July 2022 (UTC)


 * ✅ --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 22:47, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Too long?
Recently a Too Long tag was added. Whilst this was quickly reverted, the question has been asked. Okay this is a very long article and it may well be the longest article that relates to a single telescope. It comprises a set of compact sections. To substantiate the claim that this article is too long, it is necessary to identify at least one section that is not needed or find a section that is itself too long. I cannot find such a section. OrewaTel (talk) 07:24, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Agree, though it is long, everything seems to be relevant and well-managed, and all sections looks reasonable. Artem.G (talk) 07:38, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The section that can be substantially reduced is 'From launch through commissioning' - I suggest we create a sub-article called Launch and commissioning of the James Webb Space Telescope and move most of the content from the section here to the new article. In the long run, the sections on the telescope's design, construction, mission, and scientific achievements will all remain extremely relevant, but the launch/commissioning process will not. In the end, it was launched & commissioned smoothly and successfully, and devoting 3000+ words and 15 images is excessive and smacks of WP:RECENTISM. We can probably cut the section down to 500 or so words and 10 pictures without too much trouble. what do you think, since you commented as well? —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:39, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm almost always against splitting, as I see no problem in length. IMO it's better when everything is in one place, you can always scroll to the section you are interested in. I agree that this section is really long, but I also think that commissioning, testing, and mirror alignment are important - JWST is really, really complex spacecraft, and many people contributed into designing and executing of extremely complex sequence of actions. So I agree with you that the section is long, but disagree that it's a case of recentism. Artem.G (talk) 19:58, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * We definitely need *some* content on the commissioning process, but 'From launch through commissioning' is currently the second-longest individual section. It's longer than 'Features' (2,750 words), 'Comparison with other telescopes' (487 words), and 'Mission goals' (1419 words); and it's only a slight bit shorter than 'History' (3233 words). Would you mind if I took a shot at creating the subpage and trimming the section here down? Maybe we don't have to go to 500 words, but aim for 1000 as a current target. —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:23, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Pending further comments, I'm going to take a swing at trimming some content from the article in the next few days. I plan to create the linked article mention above. Please let me know if you would like to discuss the length issue further before I do so. —Ganesha811 (talk) 21:27, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I've created the sub-article (Launch and commissioning of the James Webb Space Telescope and trimmed the section in this article down to 1123 words from over 3000. I've also reduced the number of images. Please let me know what you think of these changes here on the talk page. —Ganesha811 (talk) 21:21, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Amazing work! The subarticle may need more images though. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 01:13, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Wait, it already have a lot of images at the body, I'm saying it should have an image at the lead. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 01:13, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * You're right, good call. Pick one out and move it up! —Ganesha811 (talk) 02:02, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Good work! It looks nice, my only concern is omission of mirror alignment description in the main article - I think that 'JWST Mirror alignment animations' animations are useful and still relevant, JWST is unique in the way it was done. Would you mind if I'll restore it and add trimmed version of the process? Artem.G (talk) 05:55, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure, that sounds good. —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:06, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Sunshield section was too detailed; I trimmed it even though it's probably not the most oversized section. We certainly don't need as many credits (in this broad article) to the various subcontractors.Jim.henderson (talk) 13:30, 28 July 2022 (UTC)