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Comment by TremendousJudge | Hacker News Reader

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TremendousJudge·

Is it known how long it would last? Wikipedia doesn't say anything about this issue

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The mission is minimum of 5 years with maximum 10 years based on the fuel.

https://jwst.nasa.gov/faq.html#howlong

What a shame. The mission won't be operational as long as its delays. After all that I'd at least hope there could be an option for re-fueling, but I bet there isn't.

After 10 years it will probably need more than just fuel. And doing maintenance in orbit, especially way out in the L2 point is easier said than done. Probably easier to build a new satellite with even more capability to replace it, except of course that the JWT is famously behind schedule and over budget and a more sophisticated replacement probably won't be any easier to build.

A replacement might actually easier to build. The detector is no small feat, but the major problems with JWST come from the foldable heat shield and the segmented mirror. Both of which are due to size constraints during launch. Basically it has to fit a 20 x 14 m heat shield and a 6.5 m mirror into the 6.4 by 4.6 m fairing of an Arianne 5.

Targeting a rocket with a larger fairing diameter (even at same payload mass) would make the design much simpler. An upper stage with 20 m length and 9 m diameter on a Falcon Super Heavy would allow to have a fixed mirror and heat shield that is only folded once, instead of the crazy origami that JWST is. But of course such an upper stage doesn't exist yet. SpaceX was only started 6 years after the work on JWST started...

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