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Comment by imperio59 | Hacker News Reader

* at least a decade, right? Or are the batteries going to run out at some point?

Current estimate is closer to 20 years until fuel to keep it in the Lagrange point is exhausted. Originally planned for 10, but the deployment was precise enough to leave enough fuel for many more years :)

The supply of coolant is finite. At the time of mission planning there was no spaceship capable of resupplying at the Lagrange point. As I understand it the coolant onbaord is good for 10 years.

However, if starship is successful that situation will change and resupply becomes possible. So I suppose we'll see.

NASA is already doing resupply missions to easily-accessible orbits [1] and they have previous spin-offs less customized to repair/replace but capable nonetheless e.g. X-37/X-40

It is fully within the realm of possibility that a future OSAM mission will be capable of hitting far more distant points, since the Lunar stuff is just starting to heat up.

[1] https://nexis.gsfc.nasa.gov/osam-1.html

JWST is limited by fuel, not by the cryocooler. Helium is not a consumable, although some level of leakage may occur. But only one of its instruments requires it.

I'm guessing they didn't make it refuelable by automation, so it requires a human or custom robotics to refuel?

Current estimate is 2 decades (original worst case was 10 years depending on the accuracy of the launch, which turned out to be best case accurate!)

I thought some of the instruments would run out of helium after a decade. Other instruments may be able to run longer of course. Even better.

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