welcome back to great spacex before we begin i just want to apologize in advance for any chickens you might hear um you see i'm not recording in my usual studio so please bear with me for maybe another week and we'll be right on schedule to be using top quality recording studios alrighty then well let's get back into today's content shall we the james webb space telescope the multi-billion dollar instrument on which the hopes and dreams of astronomers worldwide rest has had to delay its launch yet again from 2018 until now this is the seventh time the james webb had been delayed what could be happening at nasa let's find out in today's episode of great spacex first and foremost let's get it out in the open the december 22nd launch will not happen engineers discovered an intermittent data dropout associated with a piece of ground support equipment after connecting the james webb space telescope with its ariane 5 launcher over the weekend in french guyana as a result the observatory's long-awaited blast-off will be delayed at least two days to december 24th to troubleshoot the problem the mission was previously set for takeoff on december 22nd from the european-run guyana space center in kuru french guiana on the northeastern coast of south america everything had been going so well the telescope was filled up boxed and the final step in preparation for the web's blast off also occurred on saturday december 11th when the observatory was raised atop its aryan 5 launch vehicle but a technical issue held up the next step in the launch campaign in a brief statement nasa wrote on its website late tuesday that the web team is working on a communications issue between the observatory and the launch vehicle system thomas zerbuckin the associate administrator for nasa's science mission directorate said tuesday that engineers found an interface problem in a system that communicates with web while it's on top of the in 5 rocket the way to think about it is it's a ground support equipment thing basically the data cables are dropping some frames technicians inside the ariane 5 rocket's final assembly building in kuru have tried to diagnose the problem but so far haven't been able to resolve it tomorrow we're going up there with the ground support equipment and just really making sure we can flush out what the issue is sir said we've tried a bunch of things and we just haven't been successful this is a 100 meter cable that goes all the way from the top of the rocket to somebody's computer somewhere in there is the problem is our guess but he also added that it's too early to say we need to go after it tomorrow and put some specific equipment into play the way things work once you find it it's easy nasa will provide more information about the new launch date no later than friday december 17th but it isn't the first time that the launch of hubble's cosmic successor has been put off as a joint project of nasa the european space agency and the canadian space agency james webb is the next generation of space telescopes designed to peer back into the earliest universe nasa hopes it and the aging hubble space telescope will operate at the same time but first webb needs to launch safely and make it through a complicated and lengthy deployment process the telescope is incredibly complex it must be folded up like origami for launch and will open itself back up once it's safely in space that has led to a series of delays for the three main web partners the recent cancellation is just the latest in a series of setbacks for a telescope initially slated to launch sometime in 2007. the launch date came and went the telescope was further delayed until the following dates here's a list of the recent timelines as follows we might even be missing some dates it's hard to keep track it's a lot of delays but the issues speak to the fact that this is a high stakes project and every single part of the 10 billion dollar mission needs to work for the mission as a whole to succeed that's why a sudden unplanned release of a clamp band on november 22nd this year pushed the launch date from december 18th to december 22nd and why we're now looking at a christmas eve launch at the earliest webb has a narrow launch window of about 30 minutes in the morning so if anything additionally goes wrong with the telescope we may be looking at no earlier than december 24th a technical snag on december 14th may have delayed the telescope launch to two additional days but that's far from the end of the telescope's journey if there are no more delays it's which is a big if the telescope will launch and begin a tense 30 days of terror after leaving earth's atmosphere the protective fairing will fall away and web will separate itself from the rocket its destination is a point known as the second lagrangian or l2 where the gravity from earth and the sun balance each other perfectly there a million miles behind our planet the spacecraft will be able to stay perfectly still relative to the earth an ideal situation for a space telescope on the month-long journey to l2 webb must unfold itself in a complex sequence of reverse origami the telescope's primary mirror composed of 18 gold sections is 21 feet in diameter and it possesses a sun shield the size of a tennis court that's far too big to fit inside a rocket so nasa and its partners designed the telescope to fold itself up neatly for the journey that process must go off without a hitch or the telescope may not work at all hubble orbits earth so its technical problems could be fixed by space shuttle astronauts by contrast james webb its cosmic successor will be orbiting the sun at a stable point about a million miles from earth such a distance means there's no way to send a repair crew out there if something goes wrong that's it once at l2 webb will spend six months turning itself on and calibrating its instruments these include both near and mid infrared sensors and two spectrographs together webb's capabilities will allow it to peer back almost to the beginning of the universe to when galaxies were just beginning to form that's farther than humans have even been able to look before and it will unlock new discoveries and perhaps new mysteries about the founding of our universe webb will also be able to look into the atmospheres of exoplanets and determine what kinds of molecules are there that's something eagerly awaited by exoplanet astronomers who will be able to search for telltale signs of life on planets beyond our solar system once in place the telescope is meant to run for decades fueled by 159 liters of hydrazine that will allow it to make minor adjustments to its orientation as needed that means astronomers can look forward to years of new discoveries and fruitful space exploration as long as webb makes it out there of course with all that riding on a launch success let's pray for a christmas and space miracle and that's all the information we have for you today if 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