NASA Webb Space Telescope Goes Through Final Test Before It Launches Into Space

The NASA Webb telescope is going through a final test to exhibit that its 18 gold-tinted mirror divisions can unfold into an accurate "honeycomb configuration."

Science reported that after the final test's conclusion this week, the giant instrument is to be folded up, packed into a shipping container, and brought to French Guiana -- its place of launch into space on October 31, 2021.

With a 6.5-meter width, the James Webb Space Telescope or JWST is the next great observatory of NASA, the successor to its Hubble Space Telescope. In a recent NASA briefing, Program Scientist Eric Smith said, the NASA Webb space telescope was born out of a realization in the middle of the 1990s decade that, regardless of how long it began into deep space, Hubble would never be able to see the very first stars and galaxies of the universe.

More so, it would never learn how they formed and evolved. This report specified, the expanding universe has "redshifted" those primordial objects' light out of the noticeable spectrum. Because of this, NASA needed a space telescope that would work in the infrared.

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Birth of NASA Webb Telescope

Due to the redshifted primordial objects' light, the notion of Webb was born, said Smith. From that time, astronomers have been discovering thousands of exoplanets.

According to Smith, JWST will be able to investigate their atmospheres for molecules like water, carbon dioxide, methane, as well as others that could suggest the existence of life.

Obtaining the $9-billion worth of machine to the point of departure has taken the agency much more time and money than Congress or even it, itself, ever expected.

JWST's construction had proven to be the most multifaceted and challenging science project in the history of NASA.

Testing Process Longer Than Planned

The testing process for the telescope's folding mirror, multiple-layered sunshield, and cryogenically cooled mechanisms has extended years quite longer than planned.

However, in late August, all that will be over because this giant telescope, in a protective covering, will be taken from the facility of Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California, and placed onto a ship.

It will sail through the Panama Canal to the spaceport of Europe near Kourou. Different from Hubble, as described in NASA's HUBBLESITE, which has a 2.4-meter width, which comfortably suited inside the Space Shuttle's bay, a mirror of the JWST is much larger compared to the fairing atop an Ariane 5 rocket and thus, it is elaborately folded so it could fit inside it.

After its launch, JWST will go on board on a six-month expedition to its station at a gravitational balance point far outside the orbit of the Moon.

Fully Mapped Out First-Year Operation

Several days from launch, engineers will start the long and delicate process of deployment of all the craft's folded parts, aligning and focusing the main mirror's 18 segments, cooling the mechanisms and ensuring everything is working.

Begona Vila, Instrument Systems Engineer of NASA said, such a process is mapped out hour after hour, and day after day.

Meanwhile, Klaus Pontoppidan, product scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute said, the first year of operation of JWST is fully mapped out as well, with researchers from more than 40 countries awarded with observing time, and 45 United States states, plus the US Virgin Islands and Washington DC.

Pontoppidan elaborated, it was not just built to do with what Hubble had done, but to respond to questions as well that cannot be "done any other way."

Related information is shown on NASA's YouTube video below: