'World's Most Magnificent Time Machine,' the James Webb Space Telescope, Leaving Houston

[Calista241]

Source: Space.com

It survived a hurricane and is now off to earthquake territory: The James Webb Space Telescope has come out of its deep freeze and will soon leave Houston to unite with its sun shield and spacecraft bus in California to prepare for a 2019 launch.

NASA officials updated media on the megatelescope's status and described trials yet to come in a teleconference yesterday (Jan. 10) from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We're extremely elated to be here, especially after the successful completion of our cryovacuum and optical testing of the world's most magnificent time machine, the Webb telescope," Mark Voyton, the manager for the Optical Telescope Element and Integrated Science Instrument Module, said during the news conference.

The telescope's mirrors and instrumentation emerged from Johnson's enormous cryovacuum chamber, Chamber A, two months ago after a series of tests to confirm its enormous primary mirror — consisting of 18 hexagonal segments — and its science instruments could work to focus and track starlight in the airless cold of space. When it launches, Webb will be the largest space telescope in the world. With seven times the collecting area of the Hubble Space Telescope and ultracool operating temperatures, it will be able to detect infrared light from the earliest stars and galaxies and even analyze the atmospheres of distant planets passing in front of their stars.



Read more: https://www.space.com/39356-james-webb-space-telescope-leaving-houston.html

---

I cannot wait for this to be launched. The Science!!...

[KY_EnviroGuy]

1. Go here to explore...

the history, science, photos and videos relating to this marvelous machine.

https://jwst.nasa.gov/index.html

I've been following this project for several years and continue to be inspired by the engineering behind it.

................

[eppur_se_muova]

2. NASA really needs to name a space telescope after Nancy Roman ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Roman

(Just rewatched this NOVA episode recently)

short clip: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/invisible-universe.html

[dalton99a]

3. Kick

[Sunlei]

4. very exciting! I hope it survives the lauch. Will it be up and in use by end of this year?

[rickford66]

5. Observing free oxygen around a distant planet means alien life.

I hope it's discovered in my lifetime.

[Fred Sanders]

6. Exciting, right? Even finding one planet with proper mass, temperature and atmosphere for

carbon based life would be enough for me in my lifetime.

Taking comfort in knowing any such planet is likely hundreds of parsecs away and no one is going there in any lifetime soon. Selfish me!

[Ligyron]

9. Heck, you just know there's some out there.

Probably more than a few. Wonder what kind of life evolved elsewhere?

[lagomorph777]

7. Awesome!

Maybe it will be able to see Trump's home world.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. My son the astronomer

(he's in a PhD program in that field) has been talking about the Webb telescope for several years now.