Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnBooty | Hacker News Reader

I just want to make sure I understand.

Your position is that they should have added significant complexity to a maneuver that was already the most complex of its kind. A maneuver with $10 billion and two decades of work on the line. In order to make the first 30 days of a 10+ year mission marginally more entertaining.

You propose this while fully aware that the "entertainment" in question consists of things unfolding in extremely slow motion, in total darkness.

I mean, okay.

(Thought experiment: when you think about the Hubble, do you think about the day they shoved it out of the shuttle's cargo bay, or do you think about those groundbreaking images it captured during its multidecade mission?)

View on HN

NASA has often added video or image capability with low scientific value to increase public engagement, despite the associated risk and cost. They made a call not to do it this time. My only point is that it would have been a nice PR opportunity if they could have found a way to make it work within their mission parameters. I apologize if making such a simple and obvious point has offended you in some way.

This is a good PR opportunity in the same sense that you giving all your earthly possesions away to charity is a good PR opportunity :)

It's only good if you ignore the cost, and look only at the benefits.

Nope. In the category of probes/satellites, NASA doesn't put cameras that aren't needed. Probes on Mars get cameras, but that's because they're in a dynamic environment. They then use those cameras in fun, engaging ways.

As the aforelinked blog post explains, the extreme environment of the JWST makes this more challenging than it would be for missions like the Mars rovers.

The dark side of the JWST (where all the instruments are) will be operating very close to absolute zero and in near-absolute darkness which, of course, is the entire point of the mission.

A selfie camera there would need to function in that environment, while also somehow not polluting the instruments on that side of the camera with heat.

It's surely do-able, but it's a more complex engineering task (and would therefore require more tradeoffs) than operating a camera in the relatively balmy environment of Mars, where heat pollution is of no concern because of the different nature of the mission.

Keep in mind that doing this on the JWST also need to have been accomplished with decades-old technology, given the extremely long design and engineering lifecycle of a complex space mission.

Literally every other nasa mission is filmed like this now. 10 billion and we can't even get visual confirmation it's doing well.

And yes. Hubble being deployed was a big deal.

Not really. There are no "selfies" of voyagers, Dawn, New Horizons, Juno etc. T There ARE pictures/data from what these have produced. JWST will be no different.

Even Hubble didnt really have any of that that I am aware of. Most of the pictures of hubble itself are from servicing missions.

Sure you have some rover selfies on Mars, but thats not the sole purpose of the instruments, quite the contrary really.

How much electrical power do you want to devote to this feel-good PR selfie camera?

According to the mission director SmarterEveryDay interviewed on his YouTube channel recently, the James Webb Space Telescope is so sensitive it could detect the heat signature of a bumblebee at the distance of the moon.

I’m pretty sure if you asked the astronomers if you could put a 5 Watt webcam on the dark side of their sun shield for the social media clicks, they’d tell you to fuck right off to L3…

If it could see a bumblebee on the moon could it detect a while on Jupiters moons ? Can anyone do the calculations ?

Well it can allegedly make photos of Jupiter that would be comparable of doing them during a close flyby, but that's likely not good enough for something of that sort. You'd have to see things through kilometers of ice.

It’s designed to see things very very far away, which are all severely redshifted. It’s mostly an infrared camera. In the human visual range of light frequencies, is camera sensors only go up to orange.

So no, it can’t detect a blue whale… ;-)

I'm wondering if there is a correlation between the level of bowing to media hype by including cameras and the actual scientific value of the mission?

The recent filming of EDL of the Perseverance rover was spectacular, but a significant aim of that mission and indeed most of the recent mars rovers has been to inspire an interest in exploration and science in the public, a significant part of that is getting happy snaps of events as they happen. The pictures taken were also of significant interest to the engineers involved as they showed events that were extremely dynamic, video being one of the best methods to gain information about the events without impacting the operation.

Web is more aimed at direct science, the products of which will, as happened with Hubble be used to make pretty pictures, which in themselves have limited scientific value, but are of enormous value in engaging the public. This combined with the difficulty and risk of capturing meaningful images given the environment makes live video a non starter.

I doubt adding a tiny camera is adding a significant complexity.

I see you haven't read NASA's aforelinked blog post where they explicitly detail the sorts of complexity it would add.

Since you've indicated an unwillingness to read the blog post I'll summarize briefly:

A camera on the "light" side of JWST would need its own heat shielding and wouldn't show us any of the instruments.

A camera on the "dark" side of JWST would need to function at temperatures close to absolute zero. It would somehow need to do this without disturbing the ultrasensitive instruments on the JWST.

This would have been needed to be accomplished with, essentially, 10-30 year old technology as the designs for spacecraft like this need to be locked in far ahead of time due to the incredible complexity of deep space launches.

In both cases the cameras would need power and data cable routing, and given the various harsh constraints involved (complexity, budget, liftoff weight, size) would have involved compromises in some other area.

There is no reason to use the camera while the telescope is telescoping. From what is being requested in this subthread it doesn’t even need to survive past the initial unfolding, just get a pic or two and be done with it.

I’ve read the article and I’m not criticising NASA’s decision. I’m just pointing out that a cam wouldn’t need to bring significant complexity, not in the insane context of this project.

What a condescending reply.

That 10 billion was funded by taxpayers, and the assertion that at the very least there should have been a possibility of those taxpayers seeing the fruits of their money through pictures instead of some intractable telemetry is a fair one.

    taxpayers seeing the fruits of their money through pictures

I've got great news for you! It's going to be taking pictures.

It's a telescope, you see.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com