NASA today opened the massive mirror of its James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) for tine final time before its imminent launch. Its mission? To change everything we know about the cosmos.
Opened for the last time on Earth on Tuesday, May 11, officials from NASA and Northrop Grumman discussed the significance of the mirrors deployment and next steps for the mission as it prepares for launch later this year from South America.
This is not just the final deployment test sequence that the team has pulled off to prepare Webb for a life in space, but it means when we finish, that the primary mirror will be locked in place for launch, said Lee Feinberg, optical telescope element manager for Webb at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Feinberg also described the golden mirrorwhich is comprised of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-plated beryllium as a technological marvel.
The lightweight mirrors, coatings, actuators and mechanisms, electronics and thermal blankets when fully deployed form a single precise mirror that is truly remarkable, he said.
The space telescope is currently undergoing final testing and packing at Northrop Grummans facility in Redondo Beach, California. Its humbling to think about the hundreds of dedicated people across the entire country who worked so hard to design and build the primary mirror, and now to know launch is so close, said Feinberg.
Webbs 21 ft./6.5 meter-diameter mirror dwarfs that of the Hubble Space Telescope, which uses a 7 ft. 10 in./2.4 meter mirror. Its been designed and funded by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Dreamed-up 30 years ago and frequently delayed, JWSTor Webbnow has a launch date of Sunday, October 31, 2021after many delays. It was supposed to launch on March 31, 2021 until the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted preparations.
Once the next Hubble is in space it will unfurl and resemble a giant sunflower. The next hurdle for engineers is to perform the final folding of the golden mirror and sunshield so that it fits neatly inside the fairing of an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket.
It will go skywards on October 31, 2021 from the European Spaceports ELA-3 launch complex in French Guiana to begin a one million miles journey into space. Its home will be whats known as the second Lagrange Point or L2, a gravitationally special point in the Solar System where it will stay in a fixed position relative to the Earth and the Sun.
JWST is roughly the size of a tennis court and will be the biggest, most powerful and most complex space science telescope ever built and launched. It will help scientists solve mysteries in our solar system, study exoplanets orbiting other stars and probe the origins of our Universe.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
