Webb James Telescope – Day 3 – LIVE TRACKING

MCC1a Mid Course Correction Burn 1a Nominal Event Time: Launch + 12.5 hours This burn fine-tunes Webb’s trajectory after launch. The duration of the burn will depend on Ariane 5 launcher performance. The #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope is launched on a direct path to an orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange Point (L2), but it needs to make its own mid-course thrust correction maneuvers to get there. This is by design, because if Webb gets too much thrust from the Ariane rocket, it can’t turn around to thrust back toward Earth because that would directly expose its telescope optics and structure to the Sun, overheating them and aborting the science mission before it can even begin. Therefore, Webb gets an intentional slight under-burn from the Ariane and uses its own small thrusters and on-board propellant to make up the difference. There will be three mid-course correction (MCC) maneuvers: MCC-1a, MCC-1b, and MCC-2. The first burn, MCC-1a, is the most important and the only other time-critical operation aside from solar array deployment during Webb’s commissioning period. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLg4…