ESA NIRSpec Instrument: Low Light test on micro-shutter array

One of the defining, and pioneering, features of the NIRSpec instrument is its ability to record the spectra of many (more than 100) objects at the same time.

This is enabled by the use of a micro-shutter array (MSA) consisting of just under a quarter of a million individually controlled micro-shutters.

By programming the array to only open those shutters coinciding with pre-selected objects of interest, light from these objects is isolated and directed to the spectroscopic stage of NIRSpec to produce the spectra.

The MSA has been developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

This photo shows NASA engineers at Goddard inspecting an MSA with a low light test.

The inspection light source is held by the technician at the front of the picture.

Four array quadrants are located within the octagonal frame in the centre of a titanium mosaic base plate.

Each quadrant contains a grid of 365×171 micro-shutters, and each micro-shutter measures approximately 100 µm × 200 µm - the width of a human hair.

NIRSpec is built by European industry to ESA's specifications and managed by the ESA JWST Project at ESTEC, the Netherlands.

The prime contractor is EADS, Airbus Defence and Space in Ottobrunn, Germany. The NIRSpec detector and micro-shutter array subsystems are provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Credits: NASA Goddard/Chris Gunn

James Webb Space Telescope "Pathfinder" Backplane in the Cleanroom

The center section of the "pathfinder" (test) backplane of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) arrived at the Goddard Space Flight Center in July 2014, to be part of a simulation of putting together vital parts of the telescope.

In this photograph, the backplane is hoisted into place in the assembly stand in NASA Goddard's giant cleanroom, where over the next several months engineers and scientists will install two spare primary mirror segments and a spare secondary mirror.

By installing the mirrors on the replica, technicians are able to practice this delicate procedure for when the actual flight backplane arrives.

Installation of the mirrors on the backplane requires precision, so practice is important.


This is a time-lapse video of the center section of the 'pathfinder' backplane for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope being moved into the clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. TRT: 1:27 

Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

NASA JWST NIRSpec: Next Generation Microshutter Array Technology

The image shows a close-up view of the next-generation microshutter arrays, designed to accommodate the needs of future observatories, during the fabrication process.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Hrybyk

The microshutters are a new technology that was developed for the Webb telescope mission.

The microshutter device is a key component Webb's Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec).

NIRSpec is a powerful instrument that will record the spectra of light from distant objects.

The microshutter device only lets light in from selected objects to shine through NIRSpec.



NASA technologists have hurdled a number of significant challenges in their quest to improve a revolutionary observing technology originally created for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Determined to make the Webb telescope's microshutter technology more broadly available, a team of technologists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center spent the past four years experimenting with techniques to advance this capability.

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Mirror Array

One of the first things the team did was eliminate the magnet that sweeps over the shutter arrays to activate them, replacing it with electrostatic actuation.

Just as significant is the voltage needed to actuate the arrays.

By last year, the team had achieved a major milestone by activating the shutters with just 30 volts.

The team used atomic layer deposition, a state-of-the-art fabrication technology, to fully insulate the tiny space between the electrodes to eliminate potential electrical crosstalk that could interfere with the arrays’ operation.

They also applied a very thin anti-stiction coating to prevent the shutters from sticking when opened.

Search for extraterrestrial intelligence targeting alien polluters

In this artist's conception, the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet displays a brownish haze; the result of widespread pollution. 

New research shows that the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) potentially could detect certain pollutants, specifically CFCs, in the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets orbiting white dwarf stars. 

Credit: Christine Pulliam (CfA)

Humanity is on the threshold of being able to detect signs of alien life on other worlds.

By studying exoplanet atmospheres, we can look for gases like oxygen and methane that only coexist if replenished by life but those gases come from simple life forms like microbes. What about advanced civilizations? Would they leave any detectable signs?

They might, if they spew industrial pollution into the atmosphere. New research by theorists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) shows that we could spot the fingerprints of certain pollutants under ideal conditions. This would offer a new approach in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

"We consider industrial pollution as a sign of intelligent life, but perhaps civilizations more advanced than us, with their own SETI programs, will consider pollution as a sign of unintelligent life since it's not smart to contaminate your own air," says Harvard student and lead author Henry Lin.

"People often refer to ETs as 'little green men,' but the ETs detectable by this method should not be labeled 'green' since they are environmentally unfriendly," adds Harvard co-author Prof Avi Loeb.

The team, which also includes Smithsonian scientist Gonzalo Gonzalez Abad, finds that the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) should be able to detect two kinds of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs); ozone-destroying chemicals used in solvents and aerosols.

They calculated that JWST could tease out the signal of CFCs if atmospheric levels were 10 times those on Earth.

A particularly advanced civilization might intentionally pollute the atmosphere to high levels and globally warm a planet that is otherwise too cold for life.

There is one big caveat to this work. JWST can only detect pollutants on an Earth-like planet circling a white dwarf star, which is what remains when a star like our Sun dies.

That scenario would maximize the atmospheric signal. Finding pollution on an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star would require an instrument beyond JWST; a next-next-generation telescope.

The team notes that a white dwarf might be a better place to look for life than previously thought, since recent observations found planets in similar environments.

Those planets could have survived the bloating of a dying star during its red giant phase, or have formed from the material shed during the star's death throes.

While searching for CFCs could ferret out an existing alien civilization, it also could detect the remnants of a civilization that annihilated itself.

Some pollutants last for 50,000 years in Earth's atmosphere while others last only 10 years. Detecting molecules from the long-lived category but none in the short-lived category would show that the sources are gone.

"In that case, we could speculate that the aliens wised up and cleaned up their act. Or in a darker scenario, it would serve as a warning sign of the dangers of not being good stewards of our own planet," says Loeb.

ATLAST telescope: Science calls for a giant space telescope

An artist’s concept of the ATLAST telescope under construction in space. This design has a segmented mirror 20 metres across. Credit: NASA/STScI.

In the nearly 25 years since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers and the public alike have enjoyed ground-breaking views of the cosmos and the suite of scientific discoveries that followed.

The successor to HST, the James Webb Space Telescope should launch in 2018 but will have a comparatively short lifetime.

Now Prof Martin Barstow of the University of Leicester is looking to the future.

In his talk at the National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2014) in Portsmouth on Tuesday 24 June, he calls for governments and space agencies around the world to back the Advanced Technologies Large Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST), an instrument that would give scientists a good chance of detecting hints of life on planets around other stars.

ATLAST is currently a concept under development in the USA and Europe. Scientists and engineers envisage a telescope with a mirror as large as 20 m across that like HST would detect visible light and also operate from the far-ultraviolet to the infrared parts of the spectrum.

It would be capable of analysing the light from planets the size of the Earth in orbit around other nearby stars, searching for features in their spectra such as molecular oxygen, ozone, water and methane that could suggest the presence of life. It might also be able to see how the surfaces of planets change with the seasons.

Within the vision "Cosmic birth to living Earths", ATLAST would study star and galaxy formation in high definition, constructing the history of star birth in detail and establishing how intergalactic matter was and is assembled into galaxies over billions of years.

If it goes ahead, ATLAST could be launched around 2030. Before this can happen, there are technical challenges to overcome such as enhancing the sensitivities of detectors and increasing the efficiencies of the coatings on the mirror segments.

Such a large structure may also need to be assembled in space before deployment rather than launching on a single rocket.

All of this means that a decision to construct the telescope needs to happen soon for it to go ahead.

Prof Barstow is the President of the Royal Astronomical Society, but is speaking in a personal capacity. He sees ATLAST as an ambitious but extraordinary project.

He commented: "Since antiquity human beings have wondered whether we really are alone in the universe or whether there are other oases of life. This question is one of the fundamental goals of modern science and ATLAST could finally allow us to answer it.

'The time is right for scientific and space agencies around the world, including those in the UK, to take a bold step forward and to commit to this project."

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): Fully Integrated 'Heart' Lowered into the Chamber - Video

This video shows as the James Webb Space Telescope's "heart," formally the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM), exits a clean room and descends into a vacuum chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Image courtesy NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Engineer Jack Marshall held his breath. The "heart" of the James Webb Space Telescope hung from a cable 30 feet in the air as it was lowered slowly into the massive thermal vacuum chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.



This "heart" of Webb is called the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM), which along with its thermal vacuum test frame and supporting hardware, weighs about as much as an elephant.

Within this test frame, ISIM sits inside a big-mirrored cube of cryo-panels and blankets. This process can be seen in a video by a Goddard videographer.

"This is the first time we are able to test the 'heart' in this configuration, which includes all four of Webb's science instruments installed on ISIM," said Marshall.

This major milestone was reached on schedule, but before the thermal vacuum chamber can be put into use ISIM's cooling system must be checked out.

This cooling system relies on using helium says team member Marc Sansebastian of NASA Goddard who is carefully checking for any leaks.

"Helium is a very hard gas to contain because it is such a small molecule," said Sansebastian.

Once the Webb team is assured that all of the cooling lines are helium tight and all electrical connections have been completed and tested, a four-months long test on ISIM will begin by pumping out all of the air, and then dropping temperatures in the chamber, down to simulate the exceptionally cold temperatures in space.

Goddard's massive thermal vacuum chamber, called the Space Environment Simulator, uses eight vacuum pumps to achieve a vacuum and plumbing with nitrogen and cold gaseous helium to reduce the temperature inside a helium shroud to as low as -423.6 F (-253.15 C or 20 kelvins).

During this testing of ISIM, there are over 1,000 temperature sensors, almost 200 heater circuits, ten helium lines and a lot of thermal zones that need to be hooked up, says Calinda Yew, Webb test engineer for the thermal vacuum chamber.

"Now we are in the process of connecting all of those sensors and heaters. The sensors will help monitor temperatures during the test and the heaters will help achieve target temperatures. We will inject helium into a shroud to lower the science instruments temperatures even further," says Yew.

NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) facing retirement

It's taken dazzling images of galaxies, stars, planets and other celestial sights, 38,000 in total.

Now beginning its 25th year orbiting Earth at 17,500 mph, the Hubble Space Telescope is getting near the end of its dazzling mission.

Continually upgraded and updated throughout its life, Hubble will now be left alone to slowly degrade and, eventually, drift back to Earth and burn-up in the atmosphere.

Fortunately, Hubble won't be the last space telescope. Far from it, Hubble's replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will launch in October 2018 and be a stunning 100x times more powerful.

It's developers say that it will be able see back in time to the the very edge of the universe.

Within the 844GB of data per month sent back to Earth, and 100 terabytes in all, have been some ground-breaking images of planets and remote galaxies that have laid bare the very essence of space and time.

Perhaps the most important observation was the Hubble Deep Field, a long-exposure image taken in 1995 that captured the light of 4,000 galaxies near The Plough stretching 12 billion years back into time.

Hubble is a time machine; it captures light that's travelled since the beginning of time, and presents us photographs of things as they were just after the Big Bang.

The Hubble Deep Field image is fitting indeed; Hubble is named after astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who theorised in the 1920s that the universe is expanding.

Around 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus is the stunning Crab Nebula, also called M1. 

It's the remnants of a star than went supernova in the year 1054, an event recorded by astronomers in China, Japan and Korea as a new star in Taurus.

Taken back in 2008, this image is about 10 light years wide and shows what happens when a star explodes.

Hubble is able to pick-out the mysterious and incredibly intricate filaments of the explosion.

At the centre is the remnant of the supernova, a dense pulsar that rotates 30 times each second.

Finding Life on other planets will take good science and luck

Humanity will have the tools to detect alien life in the next two decades, but whether scientists can actually find life in another solar system depends a lot on luck, a panel of experts said Wednesday (May 21).

While the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), expected to launch in 2018, will have the ability to search for the chemical signatures of life in the atmospheres of alien worlds, it doesn't necessarily guarantee that scientists will find extraterrestrial life somewhere in the universe.

No one is sure how life begins or how ubiquitous it is, making it very difficult to pinpoint when and where to find it, scientists said during a session at the 30th US National Space Symposium in Clorado.

"We don't know how many planets we're going to have to examine before we find life, and not finding it on 10 or 100 doesn't mean it's not there," John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for the science mission directorate said during the panel. "This may be very tricky."

This diagram shows the position of Kepler-186f in relation to Earth.

Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-CalTech

A mission still in the early stages of development could also help scientists investigate alien worlds even without the use of a large telescope.

"Starshade," the huge sunflower-shaped craft would block light from a star to allow a well-positioned space telescope to look at the atmospheres of rocky planets orbiting sun-like stars, a historically difficult feat.

By using the starshade, scientists can hunt for an "Earth twin" orbiting a yellow star in the habitable zone like Earth, the only planet scientists know hosts life.

"We'll have the capability to find it [life] and we'll have that capability within a decade with James Webb and hopefully within two decades with an Earth twin, but beyond that, it's really just up to chance," Seager, who is affiliated with the starshade group, said.

The project is led by Jeremy Kasdin, a professor at Princeton University, N.J., in conjunction with JPL and support from Northrop Grumman of Redondo Beach, Calif.

Kasdin gave a TED talk about the project on March 19.

NASA MIRI Installation on Webb Telescope - Time-lapse Video

This video shows a time-lapse of the install of the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument in a clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The actual installation took about four hours.

The four science instruments that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have to be surgically installed for precision and accuracy.

NASA has just released a time-lapse video showing how clean room engineers installed one of those instruments into a large component of the JWST.

The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), arrived at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., May 28, 2012, and has undergone inspection and testing.

Recently, it was integrated into Webb's science instrument payload known as the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM).

The ISIM will house the Webb's four main instruments.

The time-lapse video covers a period of four hours and was filmed in the largest clean room at Goddard, where all four of the Webb telescope's instruments and mirrors currently reside.

Viewers of the video will see engineers in clean room suits installing the MIRI over time.

"Actual total time to install the MIRI was just over four hours," said Jason Hylan, lead mechanical systems, mechanical integration and test, and opto-mechanical engineer for the ISIM at Goddard.

"The MIRI had to be positioned to a tolerance of 25 microns, or one one-thousandth of an inch, which is less than the width of a human hair."

MIRI will allow scientists to study cold and distant objects in greater detail than ever before.

MIRI will observe light with wavelengths in the mid-infrared range of 5 microns to 28 microns, which are longer wavelengths than human eyes can detect and even beyond the 0.6 micron to 5 micron wavelength range of Webb's other three instruments.

MIRI's capabilities will allow it to observe older, cooler stars in very distant galaxies, unveil newly forming stars within our Milky Way, find signatures of the formation of planets around stars other than our own, and record images and spectra of planets, comets and the outermost bits of debris in our solar system.

MIRI's mid-infrared coverage will complement the near-infrared capabilities of the other instruments, including observations of the most distant objects to help determine whether or not they are among the first ones that formed in the universe.

James Webb Space Telescope's "Super-eye" arrives - Video

The James Webb Space Telescope's NIRSpec instrument arrived at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Sep. 20, 2013. 

The Near-Infared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), provided by the European Space Agency and built by EADS/Astrium, will be the first multi-object spectrograph flown in space. 

Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

A new NASA video gives viewers an up close view of the arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope's "Super-eye."

The Webb telescope's Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) instrument arrived by truck at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Sept. 20, 2013, and NASA videographers documented it for everyone.

After its trans-Atlantic flight to Thurgood Marshall BWI airport, Baltimore, Md., on a specialized Russian transport plane from Germany, it was moved into the world's largest clean room for further testing.

The instrument, built at the EADS ASTRIUM facility in Munich, Germany, is often referred to as the Webb telescope's "Super-eye."

NIRSpec is Webb's instrument that will use infrared light to analyze the physical properties and chemical composition of distant galaxies, stars and planets.

NASA James Webb Space Telescope: Arrival of ESA EADS 'Super-eye' - Video

A new NASA video gives viewers an up close view of the arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope's "Super-eye."

The James Webb telescope's Near-Infrared Spectrometer, (NIRSpec), instrument arrived by truck at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Sept. 20, 2013, and NASA videographers documented it for everyone.

After its trans-Atlantic flight to Thurgood Marshall BWI airport, Baltimore, Md., on a specialized Russian transport plane from Germany, it was moved into the world's largest clean room for further testing.

The instrument, built at the EADS ASTRIUM facility in Munich, Germany, is often referred to as the Webb telescope's "Super-eye."

NIRSpec is Webb's instrument that will use infrared light to analyze the physical properties and chemical composition of distant galaxies, stars and planets.

The video shows NIRSpec after its meticulously coordinated delivery as it was unloaded off a truck, moved into a clean room and situated by engineers for inspection.

The video above runs 1 minute, 51 seconds and is available in high resolution. It was created at the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA Goddard.

It is the last of the Webb observatory's science instruments to arrive at NASA. At Goddard, each of the Webb's four science instruments will be added to the heart of telescope, known as the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM).

The Fine Guidance System/Near-InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS/NIRISS) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) have already been installed on ISIM and are currently undergoing the first cryogenic tests.

"NIRSpec's delivery from Europe to Goddard is an amazing international accomplishment," said Maurice te Plate, European Space Agency's Webb system integration and test manager and ESA MIRI instrument manager at NASA Goddard.

NIRSpec is a unique instrument, made out of a very stable and stiff material called silicon carbide. It holds a special NASA-developed device called the Micro Shutter Array.

"The Micro Shutter Array, is a unique electro-mechanical mask that has never been flown in space before," te Plate said.

"This part will allow the NIRSpec spectrograph system to measure light, sometimes very faint, of up to 100 scientific targets at the same time, while rejecting unwanted objects from its field of view."

NASA James Webb Space Telescope: backplane arrives at Marshall Centre for testing

The James Webb Space Telescope's backplane element arrives at the Marshall Center. 

Credit: NASA/MSFC/Fred Deaton

A major piece of the James Webb Space Telescope, the mirror's primary backplane support, arrived Aug. 22 at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., for testing in the X-ray and Cryogenic Test Facility.

The backplane is the backbone of the telescope, supporting its 18 beryllium mirrors, instruments and other elements while the telescope is looking into deep space.

The Webb Telescope is the world's next-generation space observatory and successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

To prepare the telescope for the extreme temperatures of space, engineers at the facility have carefully examined the telescope's mirrors inside a vacuum chamber that simulates the hypercold of space, chilling the hardware from room temperature down to a frigid minus 414 degrees Fahrenheit.

The backplane is the latest and final piece of the telescope to undergo this extreme conditioning at the Marshall Center.

The X-ray and Cryogenic Facility at the Marshall Center (PDF) is the world's largest X-ray telescope test facility and offers a unique, cryogenic, clean-room optical test environment.

Cryogenic testing will take place in a 7,600-cubic-foot, helium-cooled vacuum chamber, chilling the Webb support structure from room temperature to simulate the frigid atmosphere of space.

While the structure changes temperature, test engineers will precisely measure its structural stability to ensure it will perform as designed in the extreme temperatures of space.

The cryogenic testing is targeted to begin in September.

"This testing of the backplane will verify limited movement of the structure when exposed to cryogenic temperatures," said Helen Cole, project manager for Webb Telescope mirror activities at the test facility.

"This is important to overall performance of the telescope."

Crews unload the James Webb Space Telescope's "backplane," which was flown aboard a Lockheed C-5 airplane to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. 

Credit: NASA/MSFC/Fred Deaton

"Ensuring the best performance for the telescope requires evaluating the hardware at temperatures just as cold as in the environs of space," said Jeff Kegley, the test facility's manager.

 "This is the last in a series of Webb Telescope tests our facility has been performing since 2008; it's great to have the hardware here."

A joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, the Webb Telescope will observe the most distant objects in the universe, provide images of the first galaxies formed and see unexplored planets around distant stars.

ATK built the backplane structure at its facility in Magna, Utah, under a contract with prime contractor Northrop Grumman.

Exoplanet Cloud Behaviour Expands Habitable Zone

A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behaviour on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe. 

This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behaviour on alien planets.

This cloud behaviour dramatically expanded the habitable zone of red dwarfs, which are much smaller and fainter than stars like the Sun.

Current data from NASA's Kepler mission, a space observatory searching for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, suggest there is approximately one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf. The UChicago-Northwestern study now doubles that number.

"Most of the planets in the Milky Way orbit red dwarfs," said Nicolas Cowan, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.

"A thermostat that makes such planets more clement means we don't have to look as far to find a habitable planet."

Cowan is one of three co-authors of the study, as are UChicago's Dorian Abbot and Jun Yang. The trio also provide astronomers with a means of verifying their conclusions with the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018.

The formula for calculating the habitable zone of alien planets -- where they can orbit their star while still maintaining liquid water at their surface -- has remained much the same for decades. But the formula largely neglects clouds, which exert a major climatic influence.

"Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth," said Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at UChicago.

"They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That's part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life."

A planet orbiting a star like the Sun would have to complete an orbit approximately once a year to be far enough away to maintain water on its surface.

"If you're orbiting around a low mass or dwarf star, you have to orbit about once a month, once every two months to receive the same amount of sunlight that we receive from the Sun," Cowan said.

James Webb Space Telescope: The center section of the Primary Mirror Backplane Support Structure

The center section of the James Webb Space Telescope flight backplane, or Primary Mirror Backplane Support Structure, at ATK’s manufacturing facility in Magna, Utah. 

Credit: ATK

Assembly of the backbone of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the primary mirror backplane support structure, is a step closer to completion with the recent addition of the backplane support frame, a fixture that will be used to connect all the pieces of the telescope together.

The backplane support frame will bring together Webb's center section and wings, secondary mirror support structure, aft optics system and integrated science instrument module.

The backplane support frame also will keep the light path aligned inside the telescope during science observations.

Measuring 11.5 feet by 9.1 feet by 23.6 feet and weighing 1,102 pounds, it is the final segment needed to complete the primary mirror backplane support structure.

This structure will support the observatory's weight during its launch from Earth and hold its18-piece, 21-foot-diameter primary mirror nearly motionless while Webb peers into deep space.

ATK has begun final integration of the backplane support frame to the backplane center section, which it completed in April 2012 and two backplane wing assemblies, which it completed in March.

"Fabricating and assembling the backplane support frame of this size and stability is a significant technological step as it is one of the largest cryogenic composite structures ever built," said Lee Feinberg, James Webb Space Telescope optical telescope element manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The frame, which was built at room temperature but must operate at temperatures ranging from minus 406 degrees to minus 343 degrees Fahrenheit, will undergo extremely cold, or cryogenic, thermal testing at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The backplane support frame and primary mirror backplane support structure will shrink as they cool down in space.

This x-ray diagram of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows where the backplane support frame (BSF) is in relation to the whole observatory. 

The BSF is the backbone of the observatory, is the primary load carrying structure for launch, and holds the science instruments. 

Photo Credit: Northrop Grumman

The tests, exceeding the low temperatures the telescope's backbone will experience in space, are to verify the components will be the right size and operate correctly in space.

The primary mirror backplane support structure consists of more than 10,000 parts, all designed, engineered and built by ATK.

The support structure will measure about 24 feet tall, 19.5 feet wide and more than 11 feet deep when fully deployed, but weigh only 2,138 pounds with the wing assemblies, center section and backplane support frame attached.

When the mission payload and instruments are installed, the fully populated support structure will support more than 7,300 pounds, more than three times its own weight.

Artist's concept of the James Webb Space Telescope in orbit. Credit: NASA

The primary mirror backplane support structure also will meet unprecedented thermal stability requirements to minimize heat distortion.

While the telescope is operating at a range of extremely cold temperatures, from minus 406 degrees to minus 343 degrees Fahrenheit, the backplane must not vary more than 38 nanometers (approximately 1 one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair).

The primary backplane support structure is made of lightweight graphite materials using and advanced fabrication techniques.

The composite parts are connected with precision metallic fittings made of invar and titanium.

White Dwarfs hold the key to detecting Life on other Planets

Because it has no source of energy, a dead star—known as a white dwarf—will eventually cool down and fade away but circumstantial evidence suggests that white dwarfs can still support habitable planets, says Prof. Dan Maoz of Tel Aviv University's School of Physics and Astronomy.

Now Prof. Maoz and Prof. Avi Loeb, Director of Harvard University's Institute for Theory and Computation and a Sackler Professor by Special Appointment at TAU, have shown that, using advanced technology to become available within the next decade, it should be possible to detect biomarkers surrounding these planets—including oxygen and methane—that indicate the presence of life.

Dan Maoz

Published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers' "simulated spectrum" demonstrates that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set to be launched by NASA in 2018, will be capable of detecting oxygen and water in the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet orbiting a white dwarf after only a few hours of observation time—much more easily than for an Earth-like planet orbiting a sun-like star.

Their collaboration is made possible by the Harvard TAU Astronomy Initiative, recently endowed by Dr. Raymond and Beverly Sackler.

Faint light, clear signals
"In the quest for extraterrestrial biological signatures, the first stars we study should be white dwarfs," said Prof. Loeb.

Prof. Loeb

Prof. Maoz agrees, noting that if "all the conditions are right, we'll be able to detect signs of life" on planets orbiting white dwarf stars using the much-anticipated JWST.

An abundance of heavy elements already observed on the surface of white dwarfs suggest rocky planets orbit a significant fraction of them.

The researchers estimate that a survey of 500 of the closest white dwarfs could spot one or more habitable planets.

The unique characteristics of white dwarfs could make these planets easier to spot than planets orbiting normal stars, the researchers have shown.

Their atmospheres can be detected and analyzed when a star dims as an orbiting planet crosses in front of it.

James Watt Space Telescope - JWST

As the background starlight shines through the planet's atmosphere, elements in the atmosphere will absorb some of the starlight, leaving chemical clues of their presence—clues that can then be detected from the JWST.

When an Earth-like planet orbits a normal star, "the difficulty lies in the extreme faintness of the signal, which is hidden in the glare of the 'parent' star," Prof. Maoz says.

"The novelty of our idea is that, if the parent star is a white dwarf, whose size is comparable to that of an Earth-sized planet, that glare is greatly reduced, and we can now realistically contemplate seeing the oxygen biomarker."

In order to estimate the kind of data that the JWST will be able to see, the researchers created a "synthetic spectrum," which replicates that of an inhabited planet similar to Earth orbiting a white dwarf.

They demonstrated that the telescope should be able to pick up signs of oxygen and water, if they exist on the planet.

James Webb Space Telescope JWST: Mirror Inspection

Technicians and scientists check out one of the Webb telescope's first two flight mirrors on Sept. 19, 2012 in the clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The mirrors are going through receiving and inspection and will then be stored in the Goddard clean room until engineers are ready to assemble them onto the telescope's backplane structure that will support them.

One of the Webb's science goals is to look back through time to when galaxies were young. To see such far-off and faint objects, Webb needs a large mirror.

A telescope's sensitivity, or how much detail it can see, is directly related to the size of the mirror area that collects light from the objects being observed.

A larger area collects more light, just like a larger bucket collects more water in a rain shower than a small one.

Image Credit: NASA.

Blanketing NASA's Webb Telescope's Science Instrument Electronics

Engineers Josh Lutter (on the right), Bruce Haines (center) and Scott Lam (on the left) tuck layers of blanketing in-between the gold-coloured louvers on the James Webb Space Telescope's Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) Electronics Compartment (IEC) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. 

The blanketing insulates and shields the flight instruments and the louvers will keep heat away from the temperature-sensitive instruments that will peer through dust clouds to see how stars form.

These engineers from Genesis Engineering Solutions are doing what’s called "blanket closeout" and it took two days to complete.

The gold louvers are composite mirrors, made of gold-coated carbon fiber, designed to remove the heat from inside the IEC to deep space.

The IEC holds computing hardware for each of the science instruments. This special part of the telescope allows the computer hardware to operate at room temperature on the cold side of the telescope by directing heat away so that the telescope can deliver infrared imagery.

"As heat radiates off the panel that they are attached to, the mirrors focus it in a particular direction (namely, away from the telescope)," says Lutter.

After the engineers completed blanketing, the IEC was then placed in the thermal chamber to be tested against the chill of a space-simulated environment. This process is called the thermal vacuum and balance test. During this test, temperatures drop to about 90 degrees Kelvin (-297.67 degrees Fahrenheit or -183.15 degrees Celsius).

"This is important because we need to know how effective the IEC is at keeping heat away from the cold side of Webb," says Lutter. "If even a little heat escapes the IEC in the direction of the telescope, the telescope's sensitivity could be ruined."

Related Link: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

NASA - James Webb Space Telescope Mirror 'Cans'

The powerful primary mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to detect the light from distant galaxies. 

The manufacturer of those mirrors, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., recently celebrated their successful efforts as mirror segments were packed up in special shipping canisters (cans) for shipping to NASA.

The Webb telescope has 21 mirrors, with 18 primary mirror segments working together as one large 21.3-foot (6.5-meter) primary mirror.

The mirror segments are made of beryllium, which was selected for its stiffness, light weight and stability at cryogenic temperatures. 

Bare beryllium is not very reflective of near-infrared light, so each mirror is coated with about 0.12 ounce of gold.

Beryllium increases hardness and resistance to corrosion when alloyed to aluminium, cobalt, copper (notably beryllium copper), iron and nickel. 

In structural applications, high flexural rigidity, thermal stability, thermal conductivity and low density (1.85 times that of water) make beryllium a quality aerospace material for high-speed aircraft, missiles, space vehicles and communication satellites.

Image Credit: Ball Aerospace

JWST: "Infrared: Beyond the Visible" explores the wonder of infrared astronomy

The answers to some of the universe's greatest cosmic mysteries are written across the night sky, inscribed in light we can't see with our human eyes — but it won't be invisible to us forever.

"Infrared: Beyond the Visible" explores the wonder of infrared astronomy and the promise of the upcoming Webb Space Telescope.

Get a sense of the sights Webb will capture, with its Hubble-sharp vision and ability to reach into the farthest depths of space and time.

Join the journey of discovery, and when you're done, check out the other links for more on the infrared universe.

NASA's giant cryogenic Chamber A is made ready for the JWST

The vast cryogenic Chamber A at Johnson Space Center with its door open awaiting the JWST. Credit: NASA

The latest vital stage in advancing the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has come with the upgrade of a vast NASA thermal-vacuum chamber that was once used to test Apollo spacecraft.

Chamber A at Johnson Space Center is 16.8 metres wide and 27.4 metres high and is the only "room" big enough to hold the giant successor to Hubble in conditions like those in deep space.

Engineers have completed eight years of work to design and rebuild the facility at Houston, Texas, to make it suitable for cryogenic testing.

A three-week test that lowered the temperature inside to 11 Kelvin (-262 C) showed that the systems perform better than imagined.

The JWST, which is due to launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, in 2018, is the size of a tennis court, and with a cost of $8 billion it is important to ensure it will work in its harsh space environment.

Chamber A: Altitude /Environmental/ Space Testing provides vacuum, thermal, and thermal-vacuum chamber test operations for both manned and unmanned test enviroments. 

Johnson Space Center's expertise and facilities supports a variety of other commercial applications, environmental testing, and pressure systems design.

Chamber A has been used to test all space vehicles and components for major space programmes since the Apollo Moon missions but to make it cold and clean enough for the JWST with its honeycomb of 18 perfect mirrors, several modifications had to be made.

Most significantly, the entire system for supplying liquid nitrogen to the chamber interior was redesigned and re-plumbed.

The number of valves was cut from more than a hundred valves, all presenting potential reliability risks, to fewer than two dozen of a new, more efficient design.

The result will not only keep working even during a power cut or a hurricane, but uses less than half the amount of liquid nitrogen as before.