While we wait for Webb to make its insertion burn on Monday, Mars Ingenuity Flight 19 was delayed by bad weather, and orcas can be nice sometimes.
It’s a new year and we’re back with the weekly science round-up with all the latest happenings in science and technology, from space to the life sciences, and there’s been a lot to talk about. Obviously, the James Webb Space Telescope deployments have been front and center as we prepare for next week’s final insertion burn, but we got some news on the space commercialization front, though not all of it has been good. In a weird historic first, we’ve seen the first flight delay due to inclement weather on another planet, and back here on Earth, we caught sight of a strange circumstance of Orcas actually being nice (we think?) to a humpback whale rather than killing it because they’re jerks. It’s been a heck of a week, so let’s dig in. The James Webb Space Telescope successfully deployed all 18 of its primary mirror segments, marking the last major deployment of the mission before it attempts an insertion at Earth’s second Lagrange point (L2) early next week. “Just in from the @NASAWebb team: All 18 primary mirror segments and the secondary mirror are now fully deployed!” tweeted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on January 19. “Congratulations to the teams that have been working tirelessly since launch to get to this point. Soon, Webb will arrive at its new home, L2!” With all 18 hexagonal segments of the mirror in place, there will be a number of months taken for alignment and focusing on the telescope. The alignment of the individual segments right now is within a few millimeters, but by the time the adjustments are complete, they will be aligned to within 10s of nanometers. Assuming that next Monday’s L2 insertion goes according to plan. Stay tuned! On the flip side of astronomy news, it turns out that Starlink satellites have been streaking across nearly 20% of the Zwicky Transient Facility’s twilight observations, greatly complicating some of our most important astronomical work.
