SoylentNews
SoylentNews is people
https://soylentnews.org/

Title    The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's Next Great Observatory, Passes Final Ground Tests
Date    Sunday August 29 2021, @06:17AM
Author    requerdanos
Topic   
from the almost-ready-now dept.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/08/28/2144207

upstart writes:

The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's next great observatory, passes final ground tests:

NASA and its partners working on the James Webb Space Telescope have completed their final tests of the giant observatory and are now preparing it for a trip to a South American spaceport for a launch later this year.

Conceived more than 30 years ago as a successor of the then new Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb will be the largest observatory ever to be put in orbit. It is designed to use its infrared eyes to peer further into the universe's history than ever before. With its 6.5-meter in diameter gold-plated mirror, the telescope will attempt to answer questions about the formation of first stars and galaxies out of the darkness of the early universe.

At 44 feet (13.2 meters) long and 14 feet (4.2 m) wide, the telescope is about the size of a large tractor-trailer truck, fitted with intricate sun shades that could cover a tennis court once unfolded.

The program faced many delays, not just due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but seems finally on track to start producing ground-breaking astronomical observations. The testing, which took place at the facilities of prime contractor Northrop Grumman in California, made sure that nothing would go wrong with the more than $10 billion spacecraft during launch and once in space.

"NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has reached a major turning point on its path toward launch with the completion of final observatory integration and testing," Gregory Robinson, Webb's program director at NASA headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. "We have a tremendously dedicated workforce who brought us to the finish line, and we are very excited to see that Webb is ready for launch and will soon be on that science journey."


Original Submission

Links

  1. "upstart" - https://soylentnews.org/~upstart/
  2. "The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's next great observatory, passes final ground tests" - https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-testing-complete
  3. "James Webb Space Telescope have" - https://www.space.com/21925-james-webb-space-telescope-jwst.html
  4. "Hubble Space Telescope" - https://www.space.com/15892-hubble-space-telescope.html
  5. "Northrop Grumman" - https://www.space.com/northrop-grumman-space-systems.html
  6. "in a statement" - https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/nasa-s-james-webb-space-telescope-has-completed-testing
  7. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=50931

© Copyright 2024 - SoylentNews, All Rights Reserved

printed from SoylentNews, The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's Next Great Observatory, Passes Final Ground Tests on 2024-10-12 04:22:26