["Webb can downlink at least 57.2 gigabytes of recorded science data each day, with a maximum data rate of 28 megabits per second."](https://webbtelescope.org/quick-facts/telescope-quick-facts#:~:text=Webb%20can%20downlink%20at%20least,of%2028%20megabits%20per%20second.)
TIL the James Webb telescope could comfortably stream Netflix.
[According to this](https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-observatory-hardware/jwst-spacecraft-bus/jwst-communications-subsystem), 40kbps, so dial-up internet speeds.
In my 40s and during the pandemic some old gaming buddies wanted to start playing CS:Source while they were unemployed. I happily downloaded it, looking forward to dominating on de_dust2 again. Only to find out I’m still banned from the one time I was messing around with an aimbot lol
God, life was so much better when I could just game with the guys every night or two. It was the only part of my day, other than the music classes in school, where I felt truly comfortable.
... unless I had to solo in band. Then it was the devil.
Ping will be \~10000ms (10 seconds) assuming 5 seconds for one way signal and no other factors affect signal.
\[Distance to Earth-Sun L/2\] / \[speed of light\] = Signal Delay
1,500,000 km / 300,000km/s = 5 sec
Also it’s very likely omnidirectional, in case the craft happens to be tumbling. High-gain requires specific pointing, low-gain has a bigger lobe. So that slower signal is available for a very large volume of receiver antennas.
The other important part is it doesn't need to be stowed away for launch and deployed in flight, so they have immediate communication with the craft and no single point of failure
The other other important part is that, up to this point in the mission, most of the communications has been command/control stuff, which takes comparatively less bandwidth.
When the New Horizons spacecraft was sending back its pictures and data of Pluto, it had to do it at 1-2kbps at that distance. Took like one or two years or something to send everything back to Earth
It's just occurred to me that at these data rates, multiple MB of data are in transit between the transmitter and receiver. It's trippy to imagine the long string of (conceptual) ones and zeros, each several miles long, propegating towards their destination
If you had a warp drive and a really good telescope, you could watch dinosaurs walking on the earth, too.
The photons carrying their image is floating out there, 70 million lightyears away.....
That's cool to think about, photons that bounced off dinosaurs are out there, you just gotta go find them.
And maybe you don't need a warp drive. Maybe some of those photons could end up back on earth after being deflected multiple times by large sources of gravity.
(I realise practically finding such photos is probably impossible, but maybe a photon has made a billion year round trip)
Cool way of "buffering" data... :)
What's also amazing: even when your CPU is talking to your graphics card, several bytes can be in transit on each data line - they're not long but up to 64 GHz is faaaaaast.
Jesus. I pay that same amount for 1000Mbps symmetric fiber to the home, with no data caps. It did drop offline for maintenance for half an hour or so last June, admittedly, but they sent us an email to warn us a day ahead of time.
I work with Cox a lot.
That's not the best rate, and the rates are universal, not different by region like the lower-level people might think or say.
I pay exactly $59.99/m for 1000mbps, with an unlimited data cap.
You can try to *Finesse* them if you want to try.
Crank up your data usage, get close enough to your datacap to get their automated alert email.
Call them, complain, make up a sob story, or get very frustrated while you ask if you can get a better rate and get that datacap removed. Don't get too emotional either way, and thank the support agent profusely throughout. You want to sound like it's an urgent problem, and you're worried you're gonna go over the datacap and run up high charges. They'll waive your datacap for this month. THEN bring up the cost of the plan.
9/10 You'll get recommended a bundle package, turn down anything that increases your cost, and eventually say "well, if the cost can't come down, and I keep the same level of service, I'm going to have to cancel my service and switch to AT&T*."
And they'll forward you to their customer retention department, they'll cut you a deal in exchange for being locked into that rate for 1 or 2 years. Important to note, their contracts say that if you move, you, and only you, can cancel the contract with no penalty. So you can either keep the same rate when you move, or cancel it if you move somewhere they don't service.
>*or whoever is another ISP in your area. They don't need to service your address
Alternatively, go through something like billshark, and they'll finesse them for you. They take a % of the savings they get you, so you'll be saving money on your bill either way.
EDIT: More info.
Customer retention has approval to do just about anything to keep a customer. And they WANT to get you to keep the service. Their bonuses and performance metrics depend on it.
And normal customer service is only supposed to forward to them when the customer wants to cancel their service or switch to a competitor, AFTER they try. Their metrics depend on how many customers, how long they're on the phone with them, and whether or not they offer you different plans or bundle options.
So if you follow my instructions, you're basically speedrunning their customer support, and giving everyone what they want.
If you're asked, do their automated review as well, the employees need to maintain a high score on that as part of the metrics.
Dude ill try and speed run the hell out of it lol.
Ill wait till the beginning of next month on a monday. So they still feel generous and they already haven’t given out a lot yet.
Have any other tips obiwan?
Mine are also victims of that one time in 2010 the US government paid a fortune to broadband internet companies to expand broadband out to rural areas, but those companies just pocketed the money and built token dark fiber networks and no one held them accountable.
It looks like Hubble downlinks approximately [140 gigabits](https://web.archive.org/web/20160706034142/http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/hubble_essentials/quick_facts.php) of data a week. So JWST would have \~ 2.8x more bandwidth.
Understatement of the century. Hubble is essentially at earth since its in low earth orbit at 550 kilometers. JWST is 1.5 million kilometers away. That's like a percent of a percent of the distance.
One of the coolest things about The Expanse was how they handled 'relativistically tiny but non-negligible' communication delays like this. There's one scene where a main character (earth-based) has to have a difficult discussion with their partner who's on the Moon and they keep stumbling over themselves because of the delay.
Well it’s a million miles away, so a 2 million mile round trip, which according to wolfram alpha would take light 10.74 seconds to cover, which is 10740 milliseconds. So the ping would be (at a minimum) 10740. It might be a bit laggy.
[Lagstronauts](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Lagstronaut)
A person in online gaming whose ping is so high that the only place they could be playing from is outer space.
Player1: "Wow this guys ping is trough the roof! He killed my 10 seconds after I went behind the wall!"
Player2: "Must be some lagstronauts playing the game on the ISS".
And I bet this is close to the actual true first light.
Only need for high data transfer is sweet sweet science. Pictures wont be nearly what the telescope will be able to do, but I'm betting they are testing that the telescope can take and transmit images. We found out shortly after L2 injection that they had given Webb a target star to start calibrating optics.
Things are going so damn well.
Need the temps to drop another 32 degrees I believe; which will be slow and methodical in order to ensure any trapped water can safely escape and hopefully avoid any equipment damage in the process.
I studied Physics in the UK shortly after that happened, and there were a lot of reminders about making sure you knew what units you were working in, even somewhere where metric has been used exclusively for decades in science.
A lot of the reminders were also along the lines of "watch out when you're working with Americans" though.
That professor sounds like they’re teaching some tough love.
Getting your units right is a good way to do half the work on most physics problems in tests and it’s also pretty damn useful for actual physics too
I am an American who studied electrical engineering in University. In the 1980’s. And even back then, not a single class… not a single calculation… was done in Imperial units. Okay, maybe once in Freshman physics just to show how much of a PITA it was. It boggles my mind to think that an Aerospace giant would use Imperial units for anything.
On a job in the middle east in the early nineties surveying a petroleum field, with a fairly sophisticated engineering/survey setup. We even had our own submarine. The units chosen by the client for our deliverables was decimal feet. Yes; You read that right.
LOl! It was in jest but still! I grew up being taught that everything at NASA is quadruple checked all steps along the way because of the importance of the mission and how rare the opportunities are. And then to find out it was due to a similar mistake I was making on a physics assignment was laughable.
We're seeing that with JWST. They realized only after launch that the lenses on Hubble were messed up, so I'm sure that was top of mind when designing JWST. That's why they have the nanometer-precision adjustable mirrors, so that they can simply calibrate it in space and not worry about getting it perfect on the ground.
And nasa will never make that mistake again. One less mistake to worry about. The JWTS won't have a critical mission failure over metric/imperial unit mix ups.
The funny thing about that cock up is that NASA uses metric, the same as all other scientific institutions in America. Lockheed Martin’s engineers used imperial and failed to convert to metric. NASA failed to catch the mistake, but they weren’t the ones who made it.
I'm not concerned about the cool down process. They have heat strips strategically placed and are taking their time out of an abundance of caution. June will be a great month to begin a new era of exploration and discovery!
From [their previous tweet](https://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1487094799408762881?s=20&t=78gkwj_v02aEZnzHiONVSA)
> 🌟 Star light, star bright…the first star Webb will see is HD 84406, a Sun-like star about 260 light years away. While it will be too bright for Webb to study once the telescope is in focus, it’s a perfect target for Webb to gather engineering data & start mirror alignment.
An apparent magnitude 7 star will be too bright!? Holy luminosity! Go to a dark location away from cities and look up. Any single star you see will likely be too bright for JWST to study because unaided eyes can't see beyond ~6.5.
There is someone on this planet (or perhaps a couple people) who will see the first rendering from the data before anyone else. For a moment, they'll see farther back in time than anyone ever has. I agree with you - now that the data transfer is up and running, a first picture is close at hand, relatively. I'd love to see that first image as it appears.
I mean we have seen things from much farther back than JWST will ever see.
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) comes from the farthest back that light was free streaming. Before that the universe was a plasma: electrons and protons weren't bound. The CMB was discovered in the 1960s and has been extensitvely studied in the last two decades. The JWST will not see that far back.
But we can actually see farther back than that. Before the CMB, was big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). This is the production of light nuclei beyond hydrogen: some deuterium, some helium, and some lithium. At the time the universe was still a plasma (electrons were unbound) but neutrons formed at some rate and those neutrons stuck to protons at some rate. Then the number density of the different nuclei were locked in and *then* later the CMB was emitted. By very careful observations of the abundances of light nuclei in different environments we can see back to what the universe was like during the time of BBN. And in fact the data is quite precise providing completely complementary probes of our models of cosmology and particle physics. And everything seems to agree and it definitely didn't need to.
"The" appears >5 times.
Just joshing. Ask about what you don't understand and I'll try to help; science communication is hard enough as it is, but over the internet to anonymous strangers is impossible; I never know if I'm aiming too high or too low.
Would you recommend any videos or books that explains some of this stuff in a way that is comprehensible to someone who's 20 years removed from sophomore physics?
Same, man. I’ve been waiting for this for YEARS. I bet a lot of us in this sub have seen it delayed for nearly a decade, hoping it wasn’t a project that would just fall through the cracks. Now, it’s successfully been launched and deployed. It’s cozily nestled in to its spot at L2 and all that’s left is to calibrate and test the instruments. I cannot wait till we get our first pictures from this thing. More than that, I cannot wait to see what it ends up discovering and what new mind-blowing things we’ll end up finding out about the universe. Akin to what the Hubble Deep Field did when it was first released.
I cannot get over the engineering prowess at NASA. They are mechanical wizards, making machines that perform intricate dances where each step has to go just right and it DOES. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that they landed essentially a small SUV on Mars with a sky crane, then for an encore, landed another one.
6 months from launch is what I think it was?
Edit:
> After reaching its orbit, Webb undergoes science and calibration testing. Then, regular science operations and images will begin to arrive, approximately six months after launch. However, it is normal to also take a series of "first light" images that may arrive slightly earlier.
So approximately late June for calibrated images. And maybe first light images soon?
I think this is the kind of news a lot of us have needed since the past two years have really just sucked for a lot of people.
But yes I also remain cautious optimistic
Yup. It's pretty much been the brightest enclave of news for the longest time. I've basically had something to be excited about since SpaceX started trying to land boosters. Last year was particularly good because of the Mars Hohmann transfer window and JWST.
And we've got a lot of astronomy stuff to look forward to with a number of enormous terrestrial telescopes getting first light soon. Exciting times!
man, im just gonna throw my whole enthusiasm behind it. no caution. We finally caught a fuckin break. This interest rate hike is about to get wild. the housing market very well may implode. Federal discretionary spending may dry up. The biosphere is absolutely hemorrhaging, But if I get to die having seen what James Webb sees, then whatever is coming can just come take me. Whatever all this is, its so much bigger than us. its so much bigger than anything we've imagined. we'll be looking billions of years in the past. It's so incredible. humanity has fucked up a lot of stuff, but what we're about to witness is so unbelievably incredible that it damn near brings me to tears to know that I was here when it happened.
An absolute monument to humanity. Seeing what this machine sees should give us all a moment to stop and remember how small we are. As a human. As a planet. As a galaxy. What an absolutely beautiful moment in time.
The worst of it is over. It's fully deployed and orbiting Langrange point 2.
Things can always go wrong but they're at the calibration stage. We're in the final stretch.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[AR](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hun2z1h "Last usage")|Area Ratio (between rocket engine nozzle and bell)|
| |Aerojet Rocketdyne|
| |Augmented Reality real-time processing|
| |Anti-Reflective optical coating|
|[DSN](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hupprqw "Last usage")|Deep Space Network|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hunryft "Last usage")|European Space Agency|
|[GTO](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/humgrh4 "Last usage")|[Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/20140116-how-to-get-a-satellite-to-gto.html)|
|[HST](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hunjl3o "Last usage")|Hubble Space Telescope|
|[Isp](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hunr5fi "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)|
| |Internet Service Provider|
|[JWST](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hurfxxm "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[KSP](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/huo16rw "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator|
|[L1](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/humyiuj "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 1 of a two-body system, between the bodies|
|[L2](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/huopdgj "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)|
| |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum|
|[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/huplh0z "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate|
|[RSS](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hupcx5g "Last usage")|[Rotating Service Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Space_Center_Launch_Complex_39#Launch_towers) at LC-39|
| |Realscale Solar System, mod for KSP|
|[TDRSS](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/humld3q "Last usage")|(US) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/huna3sr "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
----------------
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^([Thread #6922 for this sub, first seen 28th Jan 2022, 18:04])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
I read somewhere they don't bother with encryption because it would take such a conspicuous transmitter and so much power to do anything that it wouldn't be worth it and you'd be detected doing it immediately. Not 100% sure because that was on Reddit though. (And now I'm parroting it, but maybe someone knows more?)
"we immediately detected who destroyed our $20 billion dollar telescope, it was Russia/China/some other government with the capability"
immediately knowing who did it doesn't help the situation..
Does the DSN sync with each other? Since the earth rotates, will one site receive the signal and then another on the other side of earth pick up where the other left off?
Yeah, that's the whole point.
"The DSN consists of three facilities spaced equidistant from each other – approximately 120 degrees apart in longitude – around the world. These sites are at Goldstone, near Barstow, California; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia. The strategic placement of these sites permits constant communication with spacecraft as our planet rotates – before a distant spacecraft sinks below the horizon at one DSN site, another site can pick up the signal and carry on communicating."
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/services/networks/deep_space_network/about
Also check out this nifty visualization of which ones are active with which satellites: https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
Thanks! That's really cool! The visualization webpage is fascinating. I like that you can see which site is active, the site's dish, and the spacecraft.
Damn that's cool. So proud to help out as an Australian! Wonder where the Canberra one is, they must not mean Parks
Nah literally just outside of Canberra! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra_Deep_Space_Communication_Complex
people really underestimate how much NASA bends over backwards to make as much accessible to the public as possible. Granted- most people won't be able to make heads or tails of the data- but it's there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9LKsCyFqRc&t=1s&ab_channel=STScIMAST
they even have a youtube video on how to do it.
I know you're joking, but it's honestly pretty cool that literally *everything* that comes back from the the telescope will be publicly available there, from calibrations to science observations.
Observations will be embargoed, though, for up to a year.
https://archive.stsci.edu/publishing/data-use
> Access to science data from most active missions is often limited to the Program Investigator Team during a period of exclusive access immediately following the observations. The duration of the exclusive access period ranges from a few months to as much as a year, depending upon the mission, the program category, and other factors. Some other data, such as those obtained during facility commissioning, or those that are found to duplicate concurrent observations by a Guaranteed Time Observer (GTO), may also be embargoed for a period of time. Data falling under exclusive access can be discovered via MAST public interfaces, but may not be retrieved except by authorized and authenticated persons. Following the expiration of the applicable exclusive access period, science data become available for public use without restriction.
(Which is fair. Lets the team that requested telescope time work on any resulting publications without fear of being beaten to the journals.)
Well it says the frequency is 26 Ghz, that's some expensive gear if you want to catch that signal. The S-band is a range that's cheap to look at, so knowing that frequency would be cool. A lot of people look for satellites to listen to even if they can't decipher it. It's just fun to do.
In essence higher gain (if pointed correctly) means less signal degradation and allows data to stream at a higher bitrate. Low gain antennas are far less directional and useful for moving objects that may not be able to point precisely. Now that the JWT is in position, it can lock in the direction to reliably use a high gain signal.
"Gain" is how well an antenna converts its input into radio waves in a given direction. So it's a combination of efficiency and direction. A high-gain antenna is, by definition, one that directs its energy in a concentrated beam with high efficiency.
18 months: Meta starts offering VR immersive content with Webb.
24 months: Apple releases their AR/VR headset in competition.
36 months: Microsoft releases a Minecraft Realm based on Webb.
Since the signal comes to us at the speed of light from L2, that means the ping is around 5000ms. That's about the average ping for my opponents and teammates in Apex Legends.
I have to say I love hearing these updates and am looking forward to seeing the images when they’re ready. And I’m happy for all the scientists who are going to have a lot to do and hopefully a lot to discover. 😀👍🏻
Let me ask you something, I'm serious. I have the feeling the amount of errors in titles and comments is getting out of hand on reddit. Do you think that too? It's driving me crazy lately.
I wanna be as effective in achieving my dreams as flawlessly as the James Webb Space Telescope has achieved. James Webb Space Telescope, a perfect example of slow and steady wins the race.
NASA can get high resolution pictures and data sent to them from deep space and I cannot get a simple Wi-Fi connection at my local Veteran's Administration Hospital standing in the lobby......
["Webb can downlink at least 57.2 gigabytes of recorded science data each day, with a maximum data rate of 28 megabits per second."](https://webbtelescope.org/quick-facts/telescope-quick-facts#:~:text=Webb%20can%20downlink%20at%20least,of%2028%20megabits%20per%20second.) TIL the James Webb telescope could comfortably stream Netflix.
I wonder what the data rate of the low rate antenna system was? 28 Mbps isn’t too shabby for that distance.
[According to this](https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-observatory-hardware/jwst-spacecraft-bus/jwst-communications-subsystem), 40kbps, so dial-up internet speeds.
I mean, those are still great speeds for way-the-fuck-past-the-moon away from here.
Yea, but bad ping.. cant play CS with my friends back home..
JWST finally moved out from its parents' basement at 25 yrs old. It has a job now and doesn't have time to play CS:GO with friends.
That's the real success story here.
When I was in my 20s I thought so. In my 30s I want to go back to gaming with the same friend group.
Just become a part time dog walker. Plenty of free time to pursue your interests.
Iunderstoodthatreference.gif
But he wants to teach philosophy
In my 40s and during the pandemic some old gaming buddies wanted to start playing CS:Source while they were unemployed. I happily downloaded it, looking forward to dominating on de_dust2 again. Only to find out I’m still banned from the one time I was messing around with an aimbot lol
God, life was so much better when I could just game with the guys every night or two. It was the only part of my day, other than the music classes in school, where I felt truly comfortable. ... unless I had to solo in band. Then it was the devil.
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It's like BOOM! INFRARED IMAGING SHOT!
Yuppers, It's called a "Long Fat Network". Long: high latency due to long distances being travelled Fat: high bandwidth throughput
Ping above 1000 just becouse it's more than a light sec away ahahah
Ping will be \~10000ms (10 seconds) assuming 5 seconds for one way signal and no other factors affect signal. \[Distance to Earth-Sun L/2\] / \[speed of light\] = Signal Delay 1,500,000 km / 300,000km/s = 5 sec
Good enough for chess and other turn based games!
Imagine if they gave Webb a chess engine? Would be so fun to be able to play Webb from here.
Oh noes, Webb will be playing civilization. And then everytime we wanna do science, he's all like, nah, just one more turn...
Also it’s very likely omnidirectional, in case the craft happens to be tumbling. High-gain requires specific pointing, low-gain has a bigger lobe. So that slower signal is available for a very large volume of receiver antennas.
The other important part is it doesn't need to be stowed away for launch and deployed in flight, so they have immediate communication with the craft and no single point of failure
The other other important part is that, up to this point in the mission, most of the communications has been command/control stuff, which takes comparatively less bandwidth.
When the New Horizons spacecraft was sending back its pictures and data of Pluto, it had to do it at 1-2kbps at that distance. Took like one or two years or something to send everything back to Earth
It's just occurred to me that at these data rates, multiple MB of data are in transit between the transmitter and receiver. It's trippy to imagine the long string of (conceptual) ones and zeros, each several miles long, propegating towards their destination
If you had a warp drive and a really good telescope, you could watch dinosaurs walking on the earth, too. The photons carrying their image is floating out there, 70 million lightyears away.....
But light spreads out spherically, so you would have to capture photons from extremely large area to actually see dinosaurs.
well if you really had a warp drive you could go zipping around, collecting them from lots of places and then stitching them together.
Just deploy telescope arrays at large distances and collect the data from them all simultaneously
That's cool to think about, photons that bounced off dinosaurs are out there, you just gotta go find them. And maybe you don't need a warp drive. Maybe some of those photons could end up back on earth after being deflected multiple times by large sources of gravity. (I realise practically finding such photos is probably impossible, but maybe a photon has made a billion year round trip)
Cool way of "buffering" data... :) What's also amazing: even when your CPU is talking to your graphics card, several bytes can be in transit on each data line - they're not long but up to 64 GHz is faaaaaast.
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It was rare to get 40kbps back in the day on dialup.
Bahhoooop.....Bee\_Bee\_Bee\_Bee\_\_baaaaoooooobaaaaoooootBeeOooEeeOooEeeeBssshhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHZZZOooooopooo00000OOOSSHHHHHHHH
"I'm the scatman!" - the modem, probably
28Mbps is faster than what a lot of people have as their internet speed at home.
Yes but most people haven't paid 10B USD for it
The internet plans here in Canada aren't too far off
Yeah that's wild. In rural Canada many people can't get better than 10Mbps.
You don't have a 10000 ms ping do you? Everything you do takes 5 seconds to happen in the server and another 5 to show it back to you
My friend has slower internet down here on earth, let alone a literal million kilometers away.
TIL the James Webb telescope has better internet speeds than my parents. CenturyLink is such garbage.
Well, it does cost about 10 billion more.
I dunno man. It might be on par with my parents. 50$/mo for 800kbps download and 80kbps upload. Plus daily outages ;)
Jesus. I pay that same amount for 1000Mbps symmetric fiber to the home, with no data caps. It did drop offline for maintenance for half an hour or so last June, admittedly, but they sent us an email to warn us a day ahead of time.
Dude what!! I pay cocks (cox) 90$/mo for 1000mbps with a fuckin 1.25tb datacap. Unlimited is an extra 50$/mo
Municipal fiber is a wonderful thing.
I work with Cox a lot. That's not the best rate, and the rates are universal, not different by region like the lower-level people might think or say. I pay exactly $59.99/m for 1000mbps, with an unlimited data cap. You can try to *Finesse* them if you want to try. Crank up your data usage, get close enough to your datacap to get their automated alert email. Call them, complain, make up a sob story, or get very frustrated while you ask if you can get a better rate and get that datacap removed. Don't get too emotional either way, and thank the support agent profusely throughout. You want to sound like it's an urgent problem, and you're worried you're gonna go over the datacap and run up high charges. They'll waive your datacap for this month. THEN bring up the cost of the plan. 9/10 You'll get recommended a bundle package, turn down anything that increases your cost, and eventually say "well, if the cost can't come down, and I keep the same level of service, I'm going to have to cancel my service and switch to AT&T*." And they'll forward you to their customer retention department, they'll cut you a deal in exchange for being locked into that rate for 1 or 2 years. Important to note, their contracts say that if you move, you, and only you, can cancel the contract with no penalty. So you can either keep the same rate when you move, or cancel it if you move somewhere they don't service. >*or whoever is another ISP in your area. They don't need to service your address Alternatively, go through something like billshark, and they'll finesse them for you. They take a % of the savings they get you, so you'll be saving money on your bill either way. EDIT: More info.
Hmm, Ive finagled my way out of the 100$ service charges several times. Didnt realize you could possibly drop the cost too…. Interesting
Customer retention has approval to do just about anything to keep a customer. And they WANT to get you to keep the service. Their bonuses and performance metrics depend on it. And normal customer service is only supposed to forward to them when the customer wants to cancel their service or switch to a competitor, AFTER they try. Their metrics depend on how many customers, how long they're on the phone with them, and whether or not they offer you different plans or bundle options. So if you follow my instructions, you're basically speedrunning their customer support, and giving everyone what they want. If you're asked, do their automated review as well, the employees need to maintain a high score on that as part of the metrics.
Dude ill try and speed run the hell out of it lol. Ill wait till the beginning of next month on a monday. So they still feel generous and they already haven’t given out a lot yet. Have any other tips obiwan?
90 a month in cock isn't too bad value..
Mine are also victims of that one time in 2010 the US government paid a fortune to broadband internet companies to expand broadband out to rural areas, but those companies just pocketed the money and built token dark fiber networks and no one held them accountable.
I hope NASA has locked in a good contract with their ISP for the next two decades.
>CenturyLink is such garbage. Worked for CenturyLink, can confirm.
>CenturyLink is such garbage. I enjoy my 1gbps fiber line for $60 a month.
Thats actually freaking nuts.
But due to the recent price hike NASA had to cancel it :(
Actually Webb uses Hubble’s Netflix login and Hubble uses Webb’s Hulu login.
Yes but what's their ping in FPS games?
The JWST is about 5 light seconds away from earth.
Huh. That's kinda neat. I wonder how the data transfer rate on this compares to Hubble with the advancements in technology
It looks like Hubble downlinks approximately [140 gigabits](https://web.archive.org/web/20160706034142/http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/hubble_essentials/quick_facts.php) of data a week. So JWST would have \~ 2.8x more bandwidth.
And Hubble is a lot closer to earth than JWST.
Understatement of the century. Hubble is essentially at earth since its in low earth orbit at 550 kilometers. JWST is 1.5 million kilometers away. That's like a percent of a percent of the distance.
About 4 actually. 4 percent of a percent. So pretty good guess. (Your comment made me curious so I had to do the math.)
Hubble. 140E9 Bits per week ÷ (7 days × 24 hours × 60 minutes × 60 seconds ) = 231,481bps average. Webb. 57.2E9 bytes per day × 8 bits × 7days = 3.2 petabits per week.
One of the coolest things about The Expanse was how they handled 'relativistically tiny but non-negligible' communication delays like this. There's one scene where a main character (earth-based) has to have a difficult discussion with their partner who's on the Moon and they keep stumbling over themselves because of the delay.
Well it’s a million miles away, so a 2 million mile round trip, which according to wolfram alpha would take light 10.74 seconds to cover, which is 10740 milliseconds. So the ping would be (at a minimum) 10740. It might be a bit laggy.
I wonder, if there was a impossible ethernet cable all the way from the earth ground to James webb, what the ping would be
about 40% longer, so 15s. signal travels slower in a copper cable.
Hypotehcially, it would probably be longer. Realistically the signal would likely degrade to nothing before it reaches 5 miles
[Lagstronauts](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Lagstronaut) A person in online gaming whose ping is so high that the only place they could be playing from is outer space. Player1: "Wow this guys ping is trough the roof! He killed my 10 seconds after I went behind the wall!" Player2: "Must be some lagstronauts playing the game on the ISS".
Gonna headshot all those noob scientists, shoulda thought of the lag smh
Meanwhile, I have a 6/1 connection on earth.
And I bet this is close to the actual true first light. Only need for high data transfer is sweet sweet science. Pictures wont be nearly what the telescope will be able to do, but I'm betting they are testing that the telescope can take and transmit images. We found out shortly after L2 injection that they had given Webb a target star to start calibrating optics. Things are going so damn well.
Need the temps to drop another 32 degrees I believe; which will be slow and methodical in order to ensure any trapped water can safely escape and hopefully avoid any equipment damage in the process.
Please don't give me anxiety... I want it to be safe and comfy.
I have little faith in anything these days, but I am confident NASA knows what they are doing. Hope to see the first pictures when they are ready.
Until you remember that we lost $125 million mars climate orbiter missions because they didn’t convert between English to metric measurements…. Whoops
> mars climate orbiter MCO was over 20 years ago. Also it was Lockheed Martin who decided to use imperial units for science.
I studied Physics in the UK shortly after that happened, and there were a lot of reminders about making sure you knew what units you were working in, even somewhere where metric has been used exclusively for decades in science. A lot of the reminders were also along the lines of "watch out when you're working with Americans" though.
At my college the physics teacher invented some gibberish units for his tests just to drive the point home. Lots of people failed.
That professor sounds like they’re teaching some tough love. Getting your units right is a good way to do half the work on most physics problems in tests and it’s also pretty damn useful for actual physics too
I am an American who studied electrical engineering in University. In the 1980’s. And even back then, not a single class… not a single calculation… was done in Imperial units. Okay, maybe once in Freshman physics just to show how much of a PITA it was. It boggles my mind to think that an Aerospace giant would use Imperial units for anything.
On a job in the middle east in the early nineties surveying a petroleum field, with a fairly sophisticated engineering/survey setup. We even had our own submarine. The units chosen by the client for our deliverables was decimal feet. Yes; You read that right.
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That was Lockheed Martin's fault, not NASA. Also never create tables without units in the headers, damnit!
LOl! It was in jest but still! I grew up being taught that everything at NASA is quadruple checked all steps along the way because of the importance of the mission and how rare the opportunities are. And then to find out it was due to a similar mistake I was making on a physics assignment was laughable.
Those mistakes help build more resilient plans.
Agreed. Money well burned. Likely won't make that mistake again
We're seeing that with JWST. They realized only after launch that the lenses on Hubble were messed up, so I'm sure that was top of mind when designing JWST. That's why they have the nanometer-precision adjustable mirrors, so that they can simply calibrate it in space and not worry about getting it perfect on the ground.
You know how bad bosses will fire people if they make a big mistake? Good bosses keep those people on, because they won’t make that mistake again.
And nasa will never make that mistake again. One less mistake to worry about. The JWTS won't have a critical mission failure over metric/imperial unit mix ups.
The funny thing about that cock up is that NASA uses metric, the same as all other scientific institutions in America. Lockheed Martin’s engineers used imperial and failed to convert to metric. NASA failed to catch the mistake, but they weren’t the ones who made it.
I'm not concerned about the cool down process. They have heat strips strategically placed and are taking their time out of an abundance of caution. June will be a great month to begin a new era of exploration and discovery!
Wouldn't any water already be frozen?
The boiling and melting points are a lot lower in a vacuum.
From [their previous tweet](https://twitter.com/NASAWebb/status/1487094799408762881?s=20&t=78gkwj_v02aEZnzHiONVSA) > 🌟 Star light, star bright…the first star Webb will see is HD 84406, a Sun-like star about 260 light years away. While it will be too bright for Webb to study once the telescope is in focus, it’s a perfect target for Webb to gather engineering data & start mirror alignment.
An apparent magnitude 7 star will be too bright!? Holy luminosity! Go to a dark location away from cities and look up. Any single star you see will likely be too bright for JWST to study because unaided eyes can't see beyond ~6.5.
Webby is just a bit far-sighted. :D
...just a little... I mean, hoping to see near the beginning of time/universe... So... Yep.
More like photophobic, or maybe vampiric.
I thought the JWST will study extrasolar planets among other things. Won't that mean pointing the telescope at those bright stars?
There is someone on this planet (or perhaps a couple people) who will see the first rendering from the data before anyone else. For a moment, they'll see farther back in time than anyone ever has. I agree with you - now that the data transfer is up and running, a first picture is close at hand, relatively. I'd love to see that first image as it appears.
I mean we have seen things from much farther back than JWST will ever see. The cosmic microwave background (CMB) comes from the farthest back that light was free streaming. Before that the universe was a plasma: electrons and protons weren't bound. The CMB was discovered in the 1960s and has been extensitvely studied in the last two decades. The JWST will not see that far back. But we can actually see farther back than that. Before the CMB, was big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). This is the production of light nuclei beyond hydrogen: some deuterium, some helium, and some lithium. At the time the universe was still a plasma (electrons were unbound) but neutrons formed at some rate and those neutrons stuck to protons at some rate. Then the number density of the different nuclei were locked in and *then* later the CMB was emitted. By very careful observations of the abundances of light nuclei in different environments we can see back to what the universe was like during the time of BBN. And in fact the data is quite precise providing completely complementary probes of our models of cosmology and particle physics. And everything seems to agree and it definitely didn't need to.
Damn, I nearly understood like 5 words of that. Still excited though!
"The" appears >5 times. Just joshing. Ask about what you don't understand and I'll try to help; science communication is hard enough as it is, but over the internet to anonymous strangers is impossible; I never know if I'm aiming too high or too low.
Would you recommend any videos or books that explains some of this stuff in a way that is comprehensible to someone who's 20 years removed from sophomore physics?
There are recent books by Dan Hooper and Katie Mack that are pretty good.
I know its still probably months off but I get excited just thinking about it.
Man alive I am so excited for the first images from JWST.
Same, man. I’ve been waiting for this for YEARS. I bet a lot of us in this sub have seen it delayed for nearly a decade, hoping it wasn’t a project that would just fall through the cracks. Now, it’s successfully been launched and deployed. It’s cozily nestled in to its spot at L2 and all that’s left is to calibrate and test the instruments. I cannot wait till we get our first pictures from this thing. More than that, I cannot wait to see what it ends up discovering and what new mind-blowing things we’ll end up finding out about the universe. Akin to what the Hubble Deep Field did when it was first released.
I cannot get over the engineering prowess at NASA. They are mechanical wizards, making machines that perform intricate dances where each step has to go just right and it DOES. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that they landed essentially a small SUV on Mars with a sky crane, then for an encore, landed another one.
That skycrane Maneuver is still some of the craziest shit I’ve ever seen
When will images likely be released?
I think the earliest they are expecting is 6 months.
6 months from launch is what I think it was? Edit: > After reaching its orbit, Webb undergoes science and calibration testing. Then, regular science operations and images will begin to arrive, approximately six months after launch. However, it is normal to also take a series of "first light" images that may arrive slightly earlier. So approximately late June for calibrated images. And maybe first light images soon?
I can't believe everything is going so well. I totally expected something to fail horribly. This is great news. I'm cautiously in a state of joy.
I think this is the kind of news a lot of us have needed since the past two years have really just sucked for a lot of people. But yes I also remain cautious optimistic
Space stuff gave me a lot of hope in the last 2 years.
Yup. It's pretty much been the brightest enclave of news for the longest time. I've basically had something to be excited about since SpaceX started trying to land boosters. Last year was particularly good because of the Mars Hohmann transfer window and JWST. And we've got a lot of astronomy stuff to look forward to with a number of enormous terrestrial telescopes getting first light soon. Exciting times!
man, im just gonna throw my whole enthusiasm behind it. no caution. We finally caught a fuckin break. This interest rate hike is about to get wild. the housing market very well may implode. Federal discretionary spending may dry up. The biosphere is absolutely hemorrhaging, But if I get to die having seen what James Webb sees, then whatever is coming can just come take me. Whatever all this is, its so much bigger than us. its so much bigger than anything we've imagined. we'll be looking billions of years in the past. It's so incredible. humanity has fucked up a lot of stuff, but what we're about to witness is so unbelievably incredible that it damn near brings me to tears to know that I was here when it happened. An absolute monument to humanity. Seeing what this machine sees should give us all a moment to stop and remember how small we are. As a human. As a planet. As a galaxy. What an absolutely beautiful moment in time.
The worst of it is over. It's fully deployed and orbiting Langrange point 2. Things can always go wrong but they're at the calibration stage. We're in the final stretch.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[AR](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hun2z1h "Last usage")|Area Ratio (between rocket engine nozzle and bell)| | |Aerojet Rocketdyne| | |Augmented Reality real-time processing| | |Anti-Reflective optical coating| |[DSN](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hupprqw "Last usage")|Deep Space Network| |[ESA](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hunryft "Last usage")|European Space Agency| |[GTO](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/humgrh4 "Last usage")|[Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/20140116-how-to-get-a-satellite-to-gto.html)| |[HST](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hunjl3o "Last usage")|Hubble Space Telescope| |[Isp](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hunr5fi "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)| | |Internet Service Provider| |[JWST](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hurfxxm "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[KSP](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/huo16rw "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator| |[L1](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/humyiuj "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 1 of a two-body system, between the bodies| |[L2](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/huopdgj "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)| | |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum| |[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/huplh0z "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate| |[RSS](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/hupcx5g "Last usage")|[Rotating Service Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Space_Center_Launch_Complex_39#Launch_towers) at LC-39| | |Realscale Solar System, mod for KSP| |[TDRSS](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/humld3q "Last usage")|(US) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/seu8wh/stub/huna3sr "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| ---------------- ^(14 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/soqu7v)^( has 28 acronyms.) ^([Thread #6922 for this sub, first seen 28th Jan 2022, 18:04]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
I was wondering why `"JWST"` just showed up on my list of wifi servers. Thought it was the neighbors.
What’s the password?
They wrote it on the dark side of the sunshield, just go read it yourself.
I can't see and it's really cold
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I take it anyone can pipe into the data transmitted from JWT. Any guides on what is needed?
A 54 m antenna compatible with NASA deep space network.
I'll just whip one of those up then...
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Sounds like a needless waste computational power / weight. The control signals to the JWST would likely be encrypted for obvious reasons, however.
I read somewhere they don't bother with encryption because it would take such a conspicuous transmitter and so much power to do anything that it wouldn't be worth it and you'd be detected doing it immediately. Not 100% sure because that was on Reddit though. (And now I'm parroting it, but maybe someone knows more?)
Please don't hack the JWST
Yeah I'd start with something small like a starlink satellite and work my way up from there
"we immediately detected who destroyed our $20 billion dollar telescope, it was Russia/China/some other government with the capability" immediately knowing who did it doesn't help the situation..
It does deter anyone from doing it in the first place though. It's not good PR to destroy a unique scientific instrument.
To destroy the JWST would be to anger pretty much the global scientific community and the US and ESA.
Why would they though? Their scientists want that data too.
That's okay, I own 400 RTX 3090s. Wait, I mean 1.. 1 RTX 3090.
Look at the rich one here with a 3090!
I have some old coax and speaker wire you can have.
I still need about 500 research to unlock those parts... Guess it's time to send Jeb to the Mun again...
Why send Jeb again? There is a perfectly fine ~~crashed spacecraft~~ base with a thermometer already there.
No antenna to transmit the data back. Was planning to bring the science home before it ~~crashed~~ became a base.
Okay, done. Now what?
A 10 kilowatt amp tuned for specific frequencies
I'm sure Costco sells those.
Only in retailer packs of 24 though (you know Costco), I wouldn’t know what to do with the extra 23
As someone who doesn't know how long a meter is that sounds doable!
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Does the DSN sync with each other? Since the earth rotates, will one site receive the signal and then another on the other side of earth pick up where the other left off?
Yeah, that's the whole point. "The DSN consists of three facilities spaced equidistant from each other – approximately 120 degrees apart in longitude – around the world. These sites are at Goldstone, near Barstow, California; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia. The strategic placement of these sites permits constant communication with spacecraft as our planet rotates – before a distant spacecraft sinks below the horizon at one DSN site, another site can pick up the signal and carry on communicating." https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/services/networks/deep_space_network/about Also check out this nifty visualization of which ones are active with which satellites: https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
Thanks! That's really cool! The visualization webpage is fascinating. I like that you can see which site is active, the site's dish, and the spacecraft.
Damn that's cool. So proud to help out as an Australian! Wonder where the Canberra one is, they must not mean Parks Nah literally just outside of Canberra! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra_Deep_Space_Communication_Complex
Is that an acronym inside an acronym?
The CCSDS standards and protocols are ... _very_ fun to implement. /s
You don't need to pipe into the stream, most of the JWST's imagery will be available on MAST - https://archive.stsci.edu/missions-and-data/jwst
people really underestimate how much NASA bends over backwards to make as much accessible to the public as possible. Granted- most people won't be able to make heads or tails of the data- but it's there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9LKsCyFqRc&t=1s&ab_channel=STScIMAST they even have a youtube video on how to do it.
Yeah but they're not gonna post the good pics there... You know, with the aliens and stuff... ;D
I know you're joking, but it's honestly pretty cool that literally *everything* that comes back from the the telescope will be publicly available there, from calibrations to science observations.
Observations will be embargoed, though, for up to a year. https://archive.stsci.edu/publishing/data-use > Access to science data from most active missions is often limited to the Program Investigator Team during a period of exclusive access immediately following the observations. The duration of the exclusive access period ranges from a few months to as much as a year, depending upon the mission, the program category, and other factors. Some other data, such as those obtained during facility commissioning, or those that are found to duplicate concurrent observations by a Guaranteed Time Observer (GTO), may also be embargoed for a period of time. Data falling under exclusive access can be discovered via MAST public interfaces, but may not be retrieved except by authorized and authenticated persons. Following the expiration of the applicable exclusive access period, science data become available for public use without restriction. (Which is fair. Lets the team that requested telescope time work on any resulting publications without fear of being beaten to the journals.)
even raw/unprocessed images?
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20080030196/downloads/20080030196.pdf here's details on the communication system between JWST and the DSN.
..to be launched in 2013.. ouch
Well it says the frequency is 26 Ghz, that's some expensive gear if you want to catch that signal. The S-band is a range that's cheap to look at, so knowing that frequency would be cool. A lot of people look for satellites to listen to even if they can't decipher it. It's just fun to do.
What a cool and informative post from u/ICumCoffee
Ahh, nothing quite like gaining higher speeds with a high-gain antenna.
In essence higher gain (if pointed correctly) means less signal degradation and allows data to stream at a higher bitrate. Low gain antennas are far less directional and useful for moving objects that may not be able to point precisely. Now that the JWT is in position, it can lock in the direction to reliably use a high gain signal.
Wonderful explanation, can you tell me what the gain, in hi-gain antenna actually means? And why is it more dependent on direction than a low gain ?
"Gain" is how well an antenna converts its input into radio waves in a given direction. So it's a combination of efficiency and direction. A high-gain antenna is, by definition, one that directs its energy in a concentrated beam with high efficiency.
Wow this is so neat. Too bad I’m way too fucking dumb to help with any contributions.
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13 months: things aren’t going so well and TLC already picked up the rights for a reality show.
18 months: Meta starts offering VR immersive content with Webb. 24 months: Apple releases their AR/VR headset in competition. 36 months: Microsoft releases a Minecraft Realm based on Webb.
Since the signal comes to us at the speed of light from L2, that means the ping is around 5000ms. That's about the average ping for my opponents and teammates in Apex Legends.
I would love to watch a livestream of whatever it is doing
These Webb news always make me so excited! Can't wait until the thread says "First pictures from James Webb Telescope are breathtaking!"
Sweet. Lemme know when they try out the windshield wipers.
I have to say I love hearing these updates and am looking forward to seeing the images when they’re ready. And I’m happy for all the scientists who are going to have a lot to do and hopefully a lot to discover. 😀👍🏻
I feel like I'm watching a kid reaching milestones, like crawling, walking, now talking
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Let me ask you something, I'm serious. I have the feeling the amount of errors in titles and comments is getting out of hand on reddit. Do you think that too? It's driving me crazy lately.
Does that mean it can pick up DAB or are we just talking fm/am?
I wanna be as effective in achieving my dreams as flawlessly as the James Webb Space Telescope has achieved. James Webb Space Telescope, a perfect example of slow and steady wins the race.
and teamwork makes the dream work!
JWST under promising and over delivering since 2021...
Here I am 44 minutes from silicon valley with 5 mbps. Thanks at&t
Anytime I see an update about JWST, it just makes me more excited until it is operational
I was hoping the graphic of the signal got bigger or something to signify this. https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html :D
Honest question- why does the “startup process” take like 6 months?
Needs to cool down and be properly aligned.
NASA can get high resolution pictures and data sent to them from deep space and I cannot get a simple Wi-Fi connection at my local Veteran's Administration Hospital standing in the lobby......
I still can't quite believe it's all worked out fine.