Articles by Stephen Clark

The final layers of the James Webb Space Telescope’s sunshade were robotically pulled taut with a system of motors, cables, and pulleys Tuesday, clearing a major milestone before unfolding mirrors to collect light from the oldest galaxies in the Universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope opened covers that protected the mission’s folded sunshield Thursday, and deployed a momentum flap to help the observatory balance against the unending light pressure from the sun.

Spaceflight Now’s Editor, Stephen Clark, speaks with NASA’s Keith Parrish, the commissioning manager for the Webb Space Telescope. It is his job to make sure the observatory unfolds and extends correctly. He talks us through the deployment sequence in the month after launch. Find out how shake, shimmy and twirl are in the ground controller’s tool box to fix anything that goes wrong.

A poor weather forecast at the Guiana Space Center in South America has forced officials to delay the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope by one day to Dec. 25, Christmas morning, mission managers said Tuesday.

A small NASA space probe blasted off from California early Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a first-of-its-kind mission to change the orbit of an asteroid, pioneering a technique that may one day be used to divert an asteroid off of a collision course with Earth.

Engineers removed the James Webb Space Telescope from its intercontinental shipping container in South America last week, and kicked off a final pre-launch comprehensive electrical systems test ahead of blastoff in December on an Ariane 5 rocket.

Bound for a pristine population of ancient asteroids, a NASA science probe named Lucy took off from Cape Canaveral before dawn Saturday and rocketed into space on top of an Atlas 5 launcher to begin a 12-year, $981 million mission seeking out clues about the early solar system.