For a number of reasons, I’ve been tracking the development the new space telescope for a few years now. Finally, on October 12, the Webb Telescope arrived in French Guiana via ship. The telescope is the world’s largest space telescope. It is currently scheduled to be launched December 18th on an Ariane 5 rocket.
The telescope, named the James Webb Space telescope and referred to as the JWST, by astronomers has been in the design state for twenty-six years. Progress on its development has been delayed countless times.
The new telescope will dwarf the Hubble Space Telescope in size, resolution and the ability to see very faint objects. The Hubble telescope operates primarily in the visible spectrum. The Webb telescope will use cameras and spectrographs tuned to near- and mid-infrared wavelengths. That should allow astronomers to view some of the oldest objects in the cosmos — it will have a sensitivity 1,000 times better than current infrared space telescopes. Scientists believe the new telescope will be able to collect photons that have been journeying toward the earth since a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
Assuming a successful launch, it will take nearly a month to reach its “home” in space. It will then deploy and unfold its many parts in a complex sequence. It will unpack and extend solar arrays, antennas, booms, radiators, mirrors, and the sunshield (which deploys like a layered umbrella.) The telescope will then cool down to temperatures around minus 400º Fahrenheit…. during this time it will be kept facing away from the sun, moon and Earth — to maintain its infrared sensitivity. It’s interesting that the JWST, unlike the Hubble, is not designed to be upgraded.
Right from the start, the scope of the project was underestimated, and it was woefully under budgeted.. The original, 1966, estimates came in at $1 billion to $3.5 billion, and with a projected launch date in 2007. Today’s price tag exceeds $9.3 billion.
Northrop Grumman is the telescope’s prime contractor. The original contract winner, TRW, was bought by Northrop in 2002. At its peak, as many as 2,000 scientists and technicians were working on JWST, with a total of about 10,000 people involved in its construction over the decades.
As launch day approaches, astronomers are both excited and nervous. The rocket ride itself won’t be the worst part. About 50 deployments need to occur after launch to set up the system. There are 344 “single-point failures.” These are individual steps that have to work for the mission to be a success. This exceeds the singe-point fails for landing on Mars by a factor of three.
Probably most of the news about the new telescope you’ve been reading concerns its name. Most people are thrilled about the scientific promise of the new telescope, but some have taken issue with naming it after James Webb, who ran NASA during the key years when it was working to put astronauts on the moon. Those objecting to the name, claim that when Webb was NASA administrator, he went along with government discrimination against gay and lesbian employees in the 1950s and 1960s.
It’s too bad such a scientific effort has to be clouded by issues that should have long-ago been put rest…..
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