The James Webb Space Telescope is one the most ambitious, and technically complex missions NASA has ever set its focus on. Building an infrared observatory of this magnitude, power and complexity has never been attempted before. In order to ensure seamless operation in space, the cutting-edge technology incorporated into Webb must be rigorously tested prior to launch. The entire design of the Webb took years to develop, and was specifically engineered to see more of the cosmos than ever before. It required hundreds of scientists, engineers, optics experts and many others to pool their knowledge in a way that had never been done. Relying on the teamwork of three prominent space agencies: NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, Webb has come to include over 1,200 people worldwide to bring the world’s newest and most powerful infrared observatory to life. — NASA — The Webb Telescope Source: NASA (https://images.nasa.gov/) Licence: Public domain (work of the U.S. federal government, 17 U.S.C. §105) Audio is served by the publisher; Budi does not host or modify it.
0:00Constructing the James Webb Space Telescope, a mission led by NASA with its partners the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, requires the collaboration of thousands of people from across the United States, Canada, and Europe. The James Webb space telescope is the most ambitious and complex space science mission humanity has ever undertaken. Webb is NASA's highest priority science mission. This is the optical and science segment of the Webb Space Telescope, in one of the largest clean rooms in the world, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This half of the observatory element successfully passed a series of rigorous vibration and acoustic tests for whether Webb's optics and science instruments can handle the stresses of launch.
1:02This element was packed and transported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas for cryogenic testing inside its massive test facility simply called Chamber A, a National Historic Landmark for its work during the Apollo missions. Successfully completing the optical telescope element was a significant milestone and now we look forward to completing final tests of the spacecraft element and then integrating both halves into the observatory. To give you a sense of where we are in the mission, the Webb Space Telescope consists of two main segments, the spacecraft bus and sunshield, called the spacecraft element, and the iconic 6.5-meter telescope and science instruments called the optical telescope element.
1:51Today, both halves of the Webb space telescope are at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California. Here, the most advanced space telescope optical element will be integrated with the spacecraft element, which includes the tennis-court sized five layer deployable sunshield and the spacecraft bus where the Webb's data and attitude control systems reside. The sunshield protects the telescope's optics and science instruments from infrared radiation or what we feel as heat emitted by the Sun, Earth and Moon. Each thin sunshield layer is about one one-thousandth of an inch thick and coated with reflective aluminum and protective silicon to provide sun protection of SPF 1 million. Webb is a testament to innovation.
2:43Intricate and advanced technological systems were developed to enable awesome science discoveries. The James Webb Space Telescope is the most technologically challenging observatory we've ever built. No one's ever done anything like this before, but the science will be worth the wait. Webb will conduct a breathtaking array of science investigations across the history of the universe, ranging from searching for the first distant galaxies to light up after the Big Bang to searching for building blocks of life in atmospheres of exoplanets. The observatory's capabilities are so enormous that major advances are expected across every branch of astronomy.
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