Mon, Dec 26, 2011
Reflective Surfaces Spent Ten Weeks At 379 Degrees Below
Zero
The last six primary mirror segments and the secondary mirror
that will fly on the James Webb Space Telescope have passed their
final cold test. This milestone concludes testing on the
telescope's individual mirror segments and represents the
successful culmination of a years-long process that broke new
ground in manufacturing and testing large space-qualified
mirrors.
"The mirror completion signifies that we can build a large,
deployable telescope for space - 18 mirrors that operate as one,"
said Scott Willoughby, vice president and Webb program manager,
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, which designed the Webb
telescope for NASA. "We have proven that real hardware will perform
to the requirements of the mission."
Completed at the X-ray & Cryogenic Facility at NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, a ten-week test
series chilled the primary mirror segments to -379 degrees
Fahrenheit. During two test cycles, telescope engineers took
extremely detailed measurements of how the mirror's shape changes
as it cools. Cryotesting verifies that the mirror will respond as
expected to the extreme temperatures of space.
Teammate Ball Aerospace performed a comparable test on the
secondary mirror, which presented a unique testing challenge
because it is the only mirror that is convex, with a surface that
curves or bulges outward. It involved a special test and more
complex optical measurements.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's next-generation space
observatory and successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The most
powerful space telescope ever built, Webb will observe the most
distant objects in the universe, provide images of the very first
galaxies ever formed and study planets around distant stars. The
Webb Telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space
Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
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