Like a dandelion reaching up to the sky on a warm spring day, the James Webb Telescope peers upwards in this stunning new photo released today by NASA. Still under construction, the powerful space-bound telescope will soon be shipped across the country for the next phase of its development.
We’re openly obsessed with the assembly of the segmented origami mirror for the James Webb Space Telescope. A gorgeous photo released today reveals the secret of an enormous robotic arm used to place the mirror segments to within a paper’s width of perfection.
The James Webb Space Telescope construction team doesn’t waste time! After hitting the halfway-point in December, they’re now up to 12 of 18 mirrors installed. Check out the livestream from the cleanroom for building this fantastic telescope now, or forever hold your peace!
What better way to spend the holidays than watching NASA technicians scurry around assembling mirror segments on the James Webb Space Telescope? With the 9th of 18 segments installed last week, we’re that much closer to hunting for signs of life on alien worlds and making our universe a little less lonely.
NASA has announced that they’ve installed the first of the James Webb Space Telescope’s mirrors. The part is one of eighteen that will eventually be bolted to the satellite, which is set to launch in 2018.
When it launches in October 2018, the James Webb Space Telescope will become the largest optical telescope in space. With its 6.5 meter wide mirror, it will gather infrared light from up to 13.5 billion light years away, giving astronomers a look at the earliest moments of the universe. But the mirror is too big to…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will be “in many ways a hundred times” more capable than Hubble, isn’t launching until 2018, but already astrophysicists are thinking about its successor. They’re calling it the High Definition Space Telescope (HDST). That’s it on the far right, towering over both its…
Like new cars, new telescopes come with their own unique smell. Unlike cars, telescopes are delicate enough that this smell can damage the high-precision instruments, killing them with their own outgassing. Here’s how NASA protects fragile space telescopes from themselves.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful space telescope ever built, and its mirrors must be kept squeaky clean. Any debris, even tiny flecks of dust, could impact its science. Ergo, “snow cleaning:” the use of carbon dioxide snow to clean the mirrors thoroughly yet gently.
Here are two engineers practicing “snow cleaning” on a test telescope mirror for the James Webb Space Telescope. I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the coolest way to dust off any surface without scratching it.
The James Webb Space Telescope takes carefully packing parts to new extremes: the packaging for the latest shipment weighted more than fifty times the actual part! This is the Space Telescope Transporter for Air Road and Sea, the shipping container for telescopes.
Behold, the GIANT GOLDEN SPIDER! Ok, this shiny marvel is actually a 2012 look at the James Webb Space Telescope under construction at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center:
The James Webb Space Telescope is about to be tucked into a massive space simulator as part of its testing to ensure it can survive the harsh orbital environment. The telescope is the next-generation planet-hunter, intended to check exoplanetary atmospheres for signs of life.
A giant robotic arm practiced hanging silver and gold mirrors on the backbone of the James Webb Space Telescope, then a human engineer carefully checked its work. Eventually, the full telescope will be launched into space, then unfold in a delicate choreography of inverse origami.
When the sunshield for the James Webb Space Telescope underwent deployment testing, it unfolded exactly like it would in space. At least, it did if you ignore the people, cranes, air, warmth, gravity, and conspicuous absence of the rest of the telescope. Even so, it looks really cool, and provides an SPF one million…
Engineers unfolded the James Webb Space Telescope's spine in the world's largest clean room in preparation for decking it with mirrors like a giant, glittering Christmas tree.
When you build an amazing spacecraft like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, you have to be methodical—and just look how neatly organized their workspace is. This photo was taken a few weeks ago at Northrop Grumman, where the pathfinder backplane of the telescope was assembled. It will soon head to NASA Johnson for…
NASA has finished and stacked the Sunshield for the Webb Space Telescope and it's now getting ready to test it. Look at this huge thing. That's enough tinfoil to cover a roasted chicken— if the chicken was the size of Tyrannosaurus Rex. According to NASA, it provides the equivalent of a 1,000,000 Sun Protection Factor.
The biggest building boom in the history of astronomy is upon us. In Chile and Hawaii and in space, astronomers are getting powerful telescopes that dwarf the current state-of-the-art instruments. When the mountain blasting and the mirror polishing are all done, we will have the clearest and most detailed views of…
Every day we find more exoplanets. With bigger and better telescopes on the horizon, we'll have far more observations of these planets than ever before — and NASA scientists are optimistic we'll discover alien life within decades.
