NASA completes solar shield deployment James Webb telescope

NASA has completed tightening the five layers of the James Webb Space Telescope’s solar shield. According to the space agency, this eliminates three quarters of the problems that can be seen as single-point failures.

On Monday, NASA already managed to tighten three of the five solar shield layers and on Tuesday the organization succeeded pull the last two tight. With that, the complex and crucial solar shield is fully deployed and NASA can once again rule out some potentially fatal problems. NASA has identified 344 such single-point failures, and 75 percent of those have already been dropped from the list.

The sun shield is the size of a tennis court and was folded in the Ariane 5. It consists of five membranes that protect the instruments against light and infrared radiation. That radiation creates background noise that affects the observation of the instruments of the James Webb telescope. The shield is made of kapton, which can withstand temperatures between -269 and 400 degrees Celsius.