NASA completes first part of Webb Telescope's MIRI Instrument

Much like the inside of an operating room, in the clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, engineers worked meticulously to implant part of the eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope.

They scrubbed up and suited up to perform one of the most delicate performances of their lives. 

That part of the eyes, the MIRI, or Mid-Infrared Instrument, will glimpse the formation of galaxies and see deeper into the universe than ever before. 

Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

Much like the inside of an operating room, in the clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., engineers worked meticulously to implant part of the eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope.



They scrubbed up and suited up to perform one of the most delicate performances of their lives. That part of the eyes, the MIRI, or Mid-Infrared Instrument, will glimpse the formation of galaxies and see deeper into the universe than ever before.

It's high-stakes surgery that has taken years of preparation. This science instrument must fit precisely into the ISIM, or Integrated Science Instrument Module (the black frame on the right to which they install the MIRI), so that it is installed exactly where it needs to be within the width of a thin human hair.



This intricate process involves a tremendous amount of work from the engineering team to make sure the instrument is settled and installed just right.

The MIRI itself weighs 181 pounds (82 kg) and is being held by a crane (on the left of the photo), which is being maneuvered by the engineer at the base of the ladder.

Each engineer has a role in the process that must be done as delicately as possible so as not to disturb anything, said Jason Hylan, the engineer responsible for the operation from start to finish.

Disturbing MIRI would cost the mission the critical science that will help shape our knowledge of the universe, and push the boundaries of scientific discoveries.

For that reason, precise engineering is key and that can put some of the engineers in awkward positions, literally.

"Because we are trying to put so much stuff into such a small space, we always run into problems related to access," Hylan said. "This is somewhat akin to working on a car under the hood – some things are easy to get to because they are on the outside of where you are working."

"Other parts are buried and are very difficult to get to. Much of what we have to integrate is on the 'inside' and so access is very difficult. "

"During the operation, we need to access multiple things at the same time and one person may only be able to access one area, so we need multiple people all around doing the same thing at the same time. It is a very coordinated operation."

Hylan said that, like watching the new World Trade Center being built in New York right now, the process is tedious, but the end result is something significant that will leave its mark on a generation.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built and observe the most distant objects in the universe, provide images of the first galaxies formed and see unexplored planets around distant stars.

The Webb telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

CERN: OPERA Feb 2012 Update on Neutrinos

The OPERA collaboration has informed its funding agencies and host laboratories that it has identified two possible effects that could have an influence on its neutrino timing measurement. These both require further tests with a short pulsed beam.

If confirmed, one would increase the size of the measured effect, the other would diminish it. The first possible effect concerns an oscillator used to provide the time stamps for GPS synchronizations.

It could have led to an overestimate of the neutrino's time of flight. The second concerns the optical fibre connector that brings the external GPS signal to the OPERA master clock, which may not have been functioning correctly when the measurements were taken.

If this is the case, it could have led to an underestimate of the time of flight of the neutrinos. The potential extent of these two effects is being studied by the OPERA collaboration.

New measurements with short pulsed beams are scheduled for May.

ESA Mars Express steadily returns to routine operation

Mission controllers are making excellent progress in returning Mars Express to routine service.

Some science activities have already resumed after being temporarily suspended last month following a series of faults related to the onboard data storage system.

Having arrived around Mars in December 2003 for an initial two-year mission, the spacecraft is now in its eighth year of science operations.

It has returned some of the most stunning images and valuable science data ever obtained from the Red Planet.

In mid-October 2011, anomalies in the operation of its Solid-State Mass Memory (SSMM) system caused science observations to be temporarily halted.

The problem had surfaced several weeks earlier, when, on several occasions, the spacecraft autonomously entered safe mode.

This is an operational mode designed to safeguard both the spacecraft and its instrument payload in the event of internal faults or errors.

Data storage problems
The cause was a complex combination of events relating to reading from and writing to memory modules in the SSMM system.

This is used to store data acquired by the instruments and housekeeping data from the spacecraft's subsystems, prior to transmission to Earth.

It is also used to store commands that have been received from ground stations while awaiting execution.

“This problem was unanticipated by the spacecraft designers, so everyone on the mission control team is learning as we go.”

The mission control team at ESOC, ESA's Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, have been working closely with technical experts from the spacecraft's manufacturer as well as other experts at ESA to troubleshoot and isolate the problem.

However, it has not been possible to date to understand nor resolve the problem with the SSMM directly.

Therefore the team are now designing a series of new procedures that will enable commands to be stored without critical dependency on the problem-plagued SSMM.

NASA Goddard Blog: Operation Ice Bridge

Operation IceBridge Off to a Successful Start in Greenland

Credit: Michael Studinger
The IceBridge crew fly down Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland with NASA's DC-8 aircraft.