On December 22, 2021, expectant citizens and apprehensive astronomers will gather to watch the James Webb Space Telescope blastoff from the European Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. The project which was initially 500 million dollars began in 1996 and was expected to launch in 2007. However, significant design changes in 2005 led to delay in construction completion until 2016 and resulted in a $10 billion dollar expense. The 25 year delay made the long-awaited launch even more thrilling for space enthusiasts. The truck-sized telescope will travel 1 million miles from Earth in one month to reach the second Lagrange, a region in space where the orbital motion of a body and gravity forces are in equilibrium.
The telescope will potentially be able to detect the formation of galaxies in the early cosmos. To achieve the goal of seeing galaxies when they were young, the telescope will need a sizable mirror to make out faraway objects that will appear distant and faint in the darkness of space. Mirrors collect reflected light from objects, and the size of the mirror determines how much can be reflected. This is known as the telescope’s sensitivity. Previously, The Herschel Space Observatory had the most extended primary mirror sent to space at 11 feet long. At 21 feet across, the JWST primary mirror will surpass records in space exploration. Because the average glass full-length mirror found in homes weighs about 100 lbs, engineers had to find an alternate material that was light enough to send the JWST to space. As a substitute, beryllium was used to build eighteen golden hexagonal segments that could be folded to reduce weight, hence the “honeycomb” description often associated with the primary mirror aboard the JWST.
To ensure that the mirrors stay cool from the adjacent telescope’s heat and the beaming sun rays, ManTech Corp designed a five-layer, kite shaped aluminum coated sunshield made of Kapton to reflect the sunlight into space. This sunshield, led by the brilliant NASA system engineer Amy Lo, will use 107 pins to hold the five-layer sheet to a base piece called a unitized pallet structure.
A 16-foot wide European rocket called Ariane 5 is a heavy-lift launch vehicle that will hold the tightly folded telescope. Scientists will watch on the edge of their seat as the mirrors, heat shield, and 40+ other systems will hopefully unfold without technical difficulties. After an interview with Amy Lo, it is clear that not a single pin of the 107 can fail while unfolding during orbit or the $10 billion dollar project will be fruitless.
Supposing all the complex systems and 107 pins work in harmony during unfolding, the advanced infrared sensitivity will letastronomers to compare the oldest galaxies to today’s, allowing us to better grasp how galaxies formed over billions of years.
- Ally Smith ’24
CBS Interactive. (n.d.). James Webb Space Telescope: Looking back in time to catch the earliest starlight in creation. CBS News. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-webb-space-telescope-60-minutes-2021-12-12/
NASA. (n.d.). Observatory – webb/NASA. NASA. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/observatory/index.html
NASA. (n.d.). Key facts – webb/NASA. NASA. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/faqs/facts.html
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