On anything that moves, from vehicles to rolling office chairs, you need to be wary of bolts rattling loose over time. Thread-locking fluids and tapes are a great way to make sure your suspect bolts stay where they should, and nyloc nuts can also keep components snug and secure.
Northrop Grumman might need to look into something along these lines, because apparently "screws and washers" are falling off the spacecraft and sunshield it is building to carry NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Space News reports that NASA's JWST program director, Greg Robinson, said that hardware was found underneath the spacecraft element of JWST (everything but the mirror and instruments) after it was moved from an acoustic testing chamber to a vibration testing chamber.
“Right now we believe that all of this hardware—we’re talking screws and washers here—come from the sunshield cover,” Robinson said today at the National Academies’ Space Studies Board in Washington D.C., according to Space News. “We’re looking at what this really means and what is the recovery plan.”
It's probably a good thing the falling screws and washers were discovered before the spacecraft went into the vibration testing chamber. “It’s not terrible news, but it’s not good news, either,” Robinson continued. The JWST program director reiterated that issues like this are why NASA and its partners do extensive testing on new spacecraft before launch.
The issue was only just discovered, and NASA and Northrop Grumman are determining the best way to move forward. NASA recently announced that tears in the sunshield and leaks in the thruster valves of JWST's spacecraft element were likely to delay the $8-plus-billion space telescope's launch to May 2020 from spring 2019 (already delayed from 2018).
In response to the troubling findings, NASA has initiated an independent review of JWST launch readiness led by former NASA Goddard director Tom Young, which is expected to be completed by the end of the month. Additionally, the national space agency has sent more personnel to Northrop Grumman's facility in Redondo Beach, California—where the JWST optical telescope element is being mated to the spacecraft element—to oversee the work.
"I still believe we’ll go in 2020," Robinson said at the Space Studies Board, though he admitted the loose screws and washers could reveal a problem that "takes longer than we expect.”
Space scientists from astrobiologists to atmospheric scientists to cosmologists are chomping at the bit to switch on James Webb and turn the biggest space telescope ever built out to the firmament. Maybe someone can send Northrop a little Loctite.
Source: Space News
Jay Bennett is the associate editor of PopularMechanics.com. He has also written for Smithsonian, Popular Science and Outside Magazine.
