James Webb Space Telescope's Heart Survives Deep Freeze
Test
After 116 days of being subjected to extremely frigid temperatures like that
in space, the heart of the James Webb Space Telescope, the Integrated Science
Instrument Module (ISIM) and its sensitive instruments, emerged unscathed from
the thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland.
The Webb telescope's images will reveal the first galaxies forming 13.5
billion years ago. The telescope will also pierce through interstellar dust
clouds to capture stars and planets forming in our own galaxy. At the
telescope's final destination in space, one million miles away from Earth, it
will operate at incredibly cold temperatures of -387 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40
degrees Kelvin. This is 260 degrees Fahrenheit colder than any place on the
Earth’s surface has ever been. To create temperatures that cold on Earth, the
team uses the massive thermal vacuum chamber at Goddard called the Space Environment Simulator, or SES, that duplicates the vacuum and extreme
temperatures of space. This 40-foot-tall, 27-foot-diameter cylindrical chamber
eliminates the tiniest trace of air with vacuum pumps and uses liquid nitrogen
and even colder liquid helium to drop the temperature simulating the space
environment.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble
Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb
is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space
Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.