First James Webb telescope mirrors delivered to Nasa – WBNews

The first two components of the huge mirror set to fly on the US James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have been delivered to Nasa. James Webb – regarded as the successor to Hubble – is due to launch in 2018. After they have been checked, the hexagonal mirror components will be stored until engineers are ready to assemble them onto the telescope. Some 18 of them will make up JWST’s 6.5m primary mirror, which is more than twice as wide as Hubble’s main mirror. On 17 September, the mirrors left the facility of contractor Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado, for Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where the telescope is being assembled. Image caption The mirror components have undergone cryogenic testing at Nasa’s facilities “These first two completed flight mirror assemblies arriving at Goddard are an important first step leading towards the integration of the mirrors onto the flight structure,” said Lee Feinberg, the optical telescope element manager for JWST. The remaining 16 mirror “assemblies” will make their way from Boulder to Nasa Goddard over the next 12 months as they await integration into the infrared telescope in 2015. Each mirror component measures more than 1.3m across and weighs some 40kg. JWST is the first civilian space observatory to use an actively controlled, segmented mirror. Image caption Hubble views some near-infrared wavelengths. James Webb will seek longer wavelengths. Europe’s Herschel telescope goes longer still James Webb’s instruments will be tuned to light beyond the detection of our eyes -…more detail