LOS ARQUITECTOS DE LA NASA🚀

Guayaquil, Guayas | Webb Origami Design Challenge

JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE “most expensive and complex astronomical project in history”

High-Level Project Summary

Our team developed the WEBB ORIGAMI DESIGN CHALLENGE. Quite a challenge in engineering. Definitely something exceptional. By carefully analyzing the telescope, it is possible to see several creases or folds that allow the device to be launched into space and operate quietly once it is fully deployed. And what better way to understand it than using the art of folding with paper called origami. To fulfill its purpose, the telescope or its prototype has to be made of resistant materials that are easy to bend. The key is in what you want that fold to do and how that works for the mechanism. When opening, raising, lowering or expanding it, each of these actions has a pressure force.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HsIWr1y0IN-bW0HOAu6n_YDLOneo89iwX8D8ZnIkp5Y/edit#slide=id.gf5818117f5_0_11

Link to Final Project

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTRT0-Baj6jxVBEPh0gCqo-uzD9pT3QB8mkHwkpSLXzz_IrdxglD3w9_sdLosXpoYQlFzhCgDqeFiZ6/pub

Detailed Project Description

We first analyzed the telescope to start giving ideas. We did some examples of the panels from it and discovered a way to do it. We used cardboard and aluminium foil for the origami design in order to make a resistant model and better looking. We tried to do the most alike to the telescope so we cut and fold and join the parts until we had our final model.

To fulfill its purpose, the telescope or its prototype has to be made of resistant materials that are easy to bend. The key is in what you want that fold to do and how that works for the mechanism. When opening, raising, lowering or expanding it, each of these actions has a force or pressure,

that is exerted on those actions that allows a high performance and mobility in the machine. It is extremely important, since by understanding the basic functions of the actions and applying them to advanced mechanisms such as the operation and the system of this telescope, it is more dazzling to know how it works and how useful it is for all who want to know more galaxies and who knows more worlds.

As we know this is the largest infrared observer that will be in Space very soon, and it aspires to know the origin of the universe with much more precision, it could also be used to find exoplanets outside the solar system. We chose this project because we find it very interesting and relevant to know other galaxies and our origin seen from these "space eyes", which will be an achievement for humanity, the scientists and the agencies that worked on it to achieve this launch with great success and that very soon will already be an important fact as it will precisely improve the capabilities of the old Hubble space telescope.

The development of the telescope is very important since this STJW will observe the growth of the first galaxies, whose evolution still presents many questions. For example, we do not know the processes that led to the different shapes of today's galaxies, which can be elliptical, spiral or irregular. We also do not know the role of black holes or dark matter in the formation of those first galaxies. All this is essential to understand the history of the Universe.

The TEJW will have a gigantic shield the size of a tennis court made up of five layers of kapton, a lightweight, insulating foam commonly used in astronautics. The layers are less than a millimeter thick and do not touch each other. This area of vacuum between them is essential to help dissipate the heat that may pass through it. In this way, the heat shield divides the telescope into two distinct parts: on the one hand, the mirror and the scientific instruments sensitive to infrared light will be totally isolated, keeping their temperature at –233 ºC. For reference, the lowest temperature recorded on our planet is -89 ºC. On the other side of the shield, however, the situation is completely different. Exposed to sunlight, the telescope's central computer, solar panel, and navigation systems will work at a temperature of about 85 ° C.

The most remarkable thing about TEJW is its mirror, responsible for reflecting infrared light and directing it towards scientific instruments. In any telescope, the larger the mirror, the greater the ability to distinguish objects that are very close to each other (called resolution). If we talk about an infrared telescope, size is even more important: because it has a longer wavelength than visible light, infrared light requires a larger mirror to produce an image of the same quality. TEJW will have the largest mirror ever launched into space: 18 hexagonal segments, each 1.3 meters wide, which together equate to a single 6.5-meter mirror. Its resolving power is such that you could see details the size of a 50 cent coin from 40 kilometers away. And it is so sensitive that it would be able to detect the heat emitted by a bumblebee that was on the Moon!

Another use of TEJW will be to scan the atmosphere of exoplanets for substances critical to life, such as water and organic molecules. Much closer, in our Solar System, TEJW will help identify and study comets and other icy bodies located beyond the orbit of Neptune, in the so-called Kuiper belt.

Space Agency Data

In a project as large as the James Webb Telescope, it is essential to be guided by various research sources and everything we did was worked through processes. First, to understand the operation of the telescope, we separated its parts and recreated them in sketches, using the video “James Webb Space Telescope Launch and Deployment ”, and the deployment animations from the“ Goddard Media Studios ”page. We also understood more about its internal infrastructure key points of the telescope such as its characteristics, from the main page of "Goddar Space Flight Center" where we also understood the process of deployment of the upper primary mirror in the "Featured Videos" seeing that it has 6.5 meters on its surface and is divided into 18 hexagonal segments. In addition, we were able to carry out a transformation process of the telescope once it was launched into space where we also proceeded to make drafts and sketches and give credits to the “James Webb - Video and Image Gallery” from NASA page. There was a brochure on the European page that clarified many things since there is precise and important data for this Project, taken from “Featured Content Webb / NASA” and “Webb Key Facts International”. The launch date is estimated to be December 18, which will be a very big achievement for the associations that work on it and also for the world, some of this launch data was thanks to “ESA - WEBB, science and exploration” .

Hackathon Journey

Our experience as a group realizing the Webb origami design challenge on the Space App challenges was quite interesting. We joined as a team to talk about the telescope and how we can design a model of it. We shared some examples and tried to connect the most relevant aspects of each until we got our final result. The three of us met studying architecture, so we noticed this origami design challenge and we felt excited and motivated to put our creativity on this project. The approach we gave during this experience was to work as a team so we could join the most details we could. Same way, our stepbacks were discussed and solved together, this gave us a great advantage of time.