James Webb Telescope to Laungh December 18th #SpaceSaturday
One of the great things about the Fallout video game series is the retro-future apocalyptic setting. In Fallout, the future imagined in the 50s is the future that fell to thermonuclear war, not the future that we’re in. Future design is difficult, and it changes all the time. Who could have imagined what a space telescope would look like? Maybe like the Hubble. Probably not like the James Webb telescope. The James Webb telescope looks like someone asked David Bowie to design a space kite for a Boston Robotics parkour-bot to play with. And that is excellent. Here’s more on the imminent launch of the next great space telescope from Astronomy Now:
The December 18 target date is contingent on a successful Ariane 5 launch in mid to late October, verifying corrective actions to fix a recent payload fairing issue.
Once launched, it will take Webb about 25 days to reach its orbital parking place a million miles from Earth. Over the Christmas-New Year holiday season, the telescope’s tennis court-size sunshade will deploy, segments of its primary mirror will unfold and lock into place and the tripod supporting its secondary mirror will be erected.
See and learn more!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
