A Glitch Made NASA Believe The Webb Telescope Died And Became $10 billion Space Junk

NASA researchers have discovered that NASA headquarters had a short moment of fear when engineers were unable to communicate with Webb.

On Science Channel, NASA Mission Operations Manager Carl Starr stated that Webb's tennis court-sized sun shield, which protects the observatory's very sensitive equipment from the Sun's rays, was failing to reply to Mission Control's messages. 

Starr explained that NASA engineers never saw the Sun shields "switches activate", which means that the shield wasn't fully deployed.

Starr proceeded by stating that the next step engineers took was to fire the deployment again, "and it didn't work" The Mission Control Operations Manager said that when this issue arose, the room became "very quiet, and people became very solemn." 

Mission Control never received a reaction from Webb, but engineers and scientists alike breathed a sigh of relief when a report on Webb's temperature data showed that the sun shield had deployed.

"When they told us that and we were getting the briefing. The looks on everybody's faces, the relief, and then we were able to go full speed ahead right after that," said Starr.

Reference(s): ScienceChannel