| Original Message: Webb scope deployment near nominal (virtually flawless) as last mirror module of the most-precise optical instrument every produced snaps into place. |
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This is the most expensive robot ever built. Designed to never be touched again by any man, woman (or Wendy Carlos), after being loaded onto a rocket. If there are secrets of astrophysics/reality lurking behind the previously impenetrable curtain which has separated us from the first 3-4 billion years of cosmic history, we are now going to be peering through (the fog of eons) to observe much of it. Not to jump the gun - there are other critical hurdles (multiple sun shields, tension-cables, booms). Dozens of protocols and system start-ups to go green before the show starts. When there's a robot down a gravity well a million miles long chilled to the temperature of the coldest thing on Earth (in a laboratory), obviously every command to do something critically important (with hardware or software) is potentially catastrophic if it fails. I mean, just imagine building the most optically-precise scope, and most-expensive robot in history, then dropping the whole combo down a well over 1 million miles long with an infinite ocean of liquid nitrogen at the bottom. That is essentially what's been done. So far nominal. Someone must have figured out a way to shield this project from the harmful radiation of government's direct control, otherwise it would never have been this successful.
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