What a delightful Saturday morning. Helen roused me from sleep and into the living room to watch the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope [JWST] via ArianeSpace from their Spaceport in French Guiana. Carried on YouTube Television, the feed was rock solid. ArianeSpace was smooth as silk, performing as the Number One Space Launch facility in the world would be expected.
The only disorganized, meathead performance was from NASA taking 4 or 5 minutes to manage their congrats hookup after launch. With an unbelievable performance from a Congressional-level politician representing NASA prattling about how he expects to see G_d once the telescope is in position and functioning!
Aside from that piece of American political absurdity, everything technical, scientific, a professional feed from a team that produces many launches every year ran like proper clockwork. This has been a truly beautiful morning.
The Virtual Telescope Project captured a mesmerizing image of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during its journey to deep space. The telescope is currently around 711,000 miles away from Earth, almost 80 percent of the way to its destination. https://www.inverse.com/science/amazing-images-show-webb-making-its-way-through-space
See also short animation that reveals the tiny speck that is the JWST making its way through deep space. https://imgix.bustle.com/uploads/image/2022/1/10/361034bc-732e-4384-8cfa-e5ce61b82947-jwst_08jan2022_pw17_lowres.gif?fit=max&fm=webm Go full screen, JWST is in the center and indicated by an arrow between the text before the animation and movement of JWST begins.
“NASA Is Keeping the James Webb Telescope’s First Target Secret” https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-james-webb-secret-target