NASA’s new mission--Keeping a 'Trained Eye' on the James Webb Space Telescope

-->

NASA and Northrop Grumman are keeping a "trained eye" on the James Webb Space Telescope, by giving trainings to their engineers on handling and to assembly the telescope's Optical Telescope Element (OTE), which is known as the "eye" of the telescope.

Recently, a replicate of the OTE’s Primary Mirror Backplane Assembly (PMBA), was used to simulate how the element frame will be handled when the actual components of the telescope are being assembled.

Actually the OTE’s will support the frame house of the all the 18 Primary Mirror Segment Assemblies that has the Primary Mirror on the telescope. The OTE gathers the light coming from the space and directs it to the science instruments.

But James Webb Space Telescope is the next-generation premier space observatory, exploring the deep space phenomena from far-away galaxies to nearby planets and stars. This Webb Telescope will give scientists clues about the formation of the universe and the evolution of solar system, from the first light after the Big Bang to the structure of star systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth.

So this telescope obviously needs a large mirror to collect as much light as possible to view the galaxies from the beginning of the Universe. The Webb telescope scientists and engineers have determined that a primary mirror 6.5 meters across is required to collect the enough light to measure these galaxies.

The other important components of the OTE includes the Secondary Mirror Assembly and its tripod support, the secondary mirror support structures, the Aft Optics Subsystem which has the tertiary mirror and the fine steering mirror, the Deployable Tower Assembly, along with electronics and the thermal control hardware. In addition to holding the OTE together, the PMBA will be arranged where the science instruments, in the Integrated Science Instrument Module, are installed in the Observatory.

The Primary Mirror Backplane Assembly that holds the OTE is too extensive to fit inside a rocket. So, the solution to make it fit is to enable the OTE to fold up; that's what the engineering team has enabled the OTE to do. Once folded it will fit to a rocket, and after launching will then unfold in space under the command from the Earth.

All the flight primary mirror segments that populate the OTE had completed the grinding phase. Mark Clampin, the Webb Telescope Observatory Project Scientist at Goddard said that "with all 18 flight mirror segments in the last polishing stage of production, now its time to start the preparations for the installation, beginning with the challenging task of handling the telescope’s huge mounting structure".

All the 18 primary mirror segments in the OTE are made up of three slightly different shapes, consisting of six mirrors of each shape. Another task to the engineers was to make the mirrors light enough to launch, so that they solve the problem by using a metal called Beryllium.

After the completion of the OTE structure it will be built and finalized, once the mirrors have been completed, the mirrors will be integrated into the OTE. "The Mirror installation begins on the structure in August 2011 and the telescope is built with the mirrors in May 2012". NASA Goddard is managing the overall development effort for the Webb Telescope which is being built by Northrop Grumman, is the joint project of NASA and many U.S. partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. So this Webb telescope will be expected to launch in the year of 2014.

For further more information please visit NASA Satellites.