For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – NASA has awarded Lockheed Martin a trio of contracts critical to carrying out the world’s first ever Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign in order to successfully retrieve and return the first ever soil and rock samples from the Martian surface to Earth – currently being gathered by the Perseverance rover and destined
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) snapped an absolutely stunning ‘selife’ of its 18 segment primary mirror as part of the initial alignment process in progress for the primary mirror – after the mammoth international observatory arrived at its final orbital destination at the L2 Lagrange Point on 24 Jan. 2022, sliding
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – Culminating an arduous two decade long development and million mile journey since launching on Christmas Day, the massive international James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) finally arrived at its final orbital destination at the L2 Lagrange Point on 24 Jan. 2022, sliding gently into its new home a million miles from earth –
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has at last fully unfurled from its origami like prelaunch state after engineers successfully completed the last major deployment Saturday, Jan. 8, and swung open the last of two three segment side wings to wholly unfold and lock in place its 21-foot (6.5 m) gold-coated primary
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – In another major milestone NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the tripod assembly holding the observatory’s secondary mirror successfully unfolded and latched to deploy the 2.4-foot (0.74-meter) mirror into place – which is essential for reflecting light from the distant Universe gathered by the primary mirror into the powerful science instruments so
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – Mission controllers with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have successfully completed the deployment, separation and tensioning of the observatory’s massive five-layered sunshield to pull them completely taut into final operational position on Tuesday, Jan. 4 – which is considered as the most riskiest of actions of the telescopes entire month-long extremely
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – Mission controllers with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have successfully commanded the full unfurling of the massive 5 layered sunshield on New Year’s Eve Friday evening. Dec. 31 – thereby accomplishing one of the most nail-biting operations of the entire high-stakes month long deployment sequence at a distance of some 400,000
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – Mission controllers with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have successfully started the high stakes sunshield deployment phase of the mammoth observatory which is critical to cooling the probe to the utterly cold operating temperatures required so it can detect infrared light for which it was designed in order to carry out
For SpaceUpClose.com & RocketSTEM CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – NASA’s mammoth James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has successfully deployed its high data rate antenna critical for transmitting the huge volumes to be collected by the observatory and also carried out its first two mid-course correction burns placing it on course for the voyage to its final operational destination at a unique
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – After much blood, sweat and tears expended over two decades in the making, NASA’s mammoth James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched at last on Christmas morning, Saturday, Dec. 25, from the Guiana Space Center in South America on a robotic mission as a cosmic time machine peering back to nearly the beginning of time to see