The James Webb Telescope Has Problems Again, This is NASA’s Explanation

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Another technical problem occurred at the Space Telescope James Webb. On January 15, 2023, his Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument experienced a communication delay, causing his flight software to crash.

The news is confirmed NASA new this week, to be precise Tuesday January 24 2023 American time. “NIRISS is currently unusable for science,” said a NASA statement.

NASA added that there was no indication of harm to the hardware, and the observatory in space and all other instruments were said to be “in good health.” Science observations affected by the problem at NIRISS, NASA said, will be rescheduled.

NIRISS is a contributed instrument of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). So NASA and CSA personnel collaborated to solve the problem.

It explains that, under normal conditions, NIRISS can operate in four different modes. NIRISS can operate as a camera when other JWST instruments are used, can analyze light signatures to study the atmospheres of small exoplanets, can perform high-contrast imaging, and can have a customized mode to find distant galaxies.

Also read: The James Webb Telescope Finds the Oldest Candidate Galaxy in the Universe

Previous Problems James Webb

NIRISS isn’t the first instrument on the giant telescope to need repair. This telescope launched into space in December 2021 and operated as of July last year.

Just the first month, in August last year, the grille wheels on the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) started showing signs of friction. The wheels are used in only one of the instrument’s four viewing modes, so personnel interrupt the sighting while continuing MIRI work in the other three modes.

By November, engineers had tracked down the cause of the problem and started developing guidelines for using the affected mode safely, called the Medium Resolution Spectrometer.

But, in December, the James Webb space observatory spent two weeks plagued by a glitch that repeatedly sent the telescope into safe mode which disrupted scientific observations. Its engineers traced the problem to a software glitch that controlled the direction the observatory pointed to.

“The Observatory has resumed normal operations since December 20,” NASA said in a statement at the time.

NIRISS’ announcement comes exactly a year after JWST arrived at its outpost, Earth-Sun Lagrange point 2, which is located almost 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth on the opposite side of the sun.