NASA Telescope Shows Off Its Silver and Gold Decorations

These two halves of the James Webb Space Telescope observatory — Webb’s combined science instruments and optics, and its combined spacecraft bus and sunshield (called the spacecraft element) — will be integrated at Northrop Grumman in 2018. Webb will launch from Kourou, French Guiana in 2019.

These most recent accomplishments were among several Webb had for 2017. In March, the telescope’s combined optics and science instruments completed acoustic and vibration testing at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., before moving to Johnson for cryogenic testing.

“This was a pivotal year for Webb. With launch environment and cryogenic testing completed, we have demonstrated our science payload functions as planned,” says Eric Smith, program director for Webb telescope at NASA. “In 2018, the telescope will meet up with the other iconic and now completed component of Webb, its sunshield and spacecraft, to form the observatory.”

On the scientific front, September saw worldwide participation from the science community for the Director’s Discretionary Early Release Science (DD-ERS) program, and in November, NASA announced the proposals it selected for the DD-ERS program. The science observations for these proposals will be completed within the first five months of Webb’s science observations.

“Though there is still observatory testing ahead of us, the response this year from the science community for Early Release Science shows that there are exciting questions already queued up for Webb to answer,” Smith says.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier infrared space observatory of the next decade. A barrier-breaking mission for engineers and astronomers, Webb will solve mysteries of our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. The scientific complement to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb assembled in a Class 10,000 cleanroom at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

Source: NASA

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