From Dream to Discovery: Inside NASA Engineering - Video

Experience the challenges of the next generation of space exploration in this brand-new Planetarium show.

By using exciting real-life projects like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the New Horizons mission to Pluto, the show highlights the extreme nature of spacecraft engineering and the life cycle of a space mission, from design and construction to the rigors of testing, launch, and operations.

Blast off and take the voyage with NASA!

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.

NASA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): Stacking up the Sunshield for Deployment Test - Video

Photo Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

The Sunshield on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the largest part of the observatory, five layers of thin membrane that must unfurl reliably in space to precise tolerances.

Last week, for the first time, engineers stacked and unfurled a full-sized test unit of the Sunshield and it worked perfectly.

The Sunshield is about the length of a tennis court, and will be folded up like an umbrella around the JWST’s mirrors and instruments during launch.

Once it reaches its orbit, the JWST will receive a command from Earth to unfold, and separate the Sunshield's five layers into their precisely stacked arrangement with its kite-like shape.


The Sunshield test unit was stacked and expanded at a cleanroom in the Northrop Grumman facility in Redondo Beach, California.

The Sunshield separates the observatory into a warm sun-facing side and a cold side where the sunshine is blocked from interfering with the sensitive infrared instruments.

The infrared instruments need to be kept very cold (under 50 K or -370 degrees F) to operate.

The Sunshield protects these sensitive instruments with an effective sun protection factor or SPF of 1,000,000 (suntan lotion generally has an SPF of 8-50).

In addition to providing a cold environment, the Sunshield provides a thermally stable environment. This stability is essential to maintaining proper alignment of the primary mirror segments as the telescope changes its orientation to the sun.

The JWST is the successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built.

JWST is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

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.

James Webb Space telescope passes a Critical Design Review milestone

Artist's impression of the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: Northrop Grumman

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has passed its first significant mission milestone for 2014, a Spacecraft Critical Design Review (SCDR) that examined the telescope's power, communications and pointing control systems.

"This is the last major element-level critical design review of the program," said Richard Lynch, NASA Spacecraft Bus Manager for the James Webb Space Telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Richard Lynch

"What that means is all of the designs are complete for the Webb and there are no major designs left to do."

During the SCDR, the details, designs, construction and testing plans, and the spacecraft's operating procedures were subjected to rigorous review by an independent panel of experts.

The week-long review involved extensive discussions on all aspects of the spacecraft to ensure the plans to finish construction would result in a vehicle that enables the powerful telescope and science instruments to deliver their unique and invaluable views of the universe.

Eric Smith

"While the spacecraft that carries the science payload for Webb may not be as glamorous as the telescope, it's the heart that enables the whole mission," said Eric Smith, acting program director and program scientist for the Webb Telescope at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"By providing many services including telescope pointing and communication with Earth, the spacecraft is our high tech infrastructure empowering scientific discovery."

Goddard Space Flight Center manages the mission. Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, Calif., leads the design and development effort.

Scott Willoughby

"Our Northrop Grumman team has worked exceptionally hard to meet this critical milestone on an accelerated schedule, following the replan," said Scott Willoughby, Northrop Grumman vice president and James Webb Space Telescope program manager in Redondo Beach, Calif.

"This is a huge step forward in our progress toward completion of the Webb Telescope."

The James Webb Space Telescope, successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, will be the most powerful space telescope ever built.

It will 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.

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."

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): NirSpec 'First starlight' instrument complete

Europe has reached another milestone in its contribution to Hubble's successor - the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

An industrial team led from EADS Astrium in Germany has completed the build of the Near-Infrared spectrometer, one of four instruments that will go in JWST.

NirSpec's job will be to determine the age, composition, movement and distance of the objects in its field of view.

The expectation is that some of these targets will include the very first stars to shine in the Universe.

That would mean picking up light signals that have travelled across space for perhaps 13.6 billion light-years - something Hubble cannot do.

JWST will make it possible with a suite of next-generation technologies, including a 6.5m primary mirror (more than double the width of Hubble's main mirror), and a shield the size of a tennis court to guard its keen vision against the light and heat from the Sun.

NirSpec is critical to this new capability, and represents 10 years of design and manufacturing endeavour.

In a short ceremony in Ottobrunn on Friday, the instrument was handed over to the European Space Agency (ESA), which had commissioned NirSpec.

The Paris-based organisation then immediately passed the near-200m-euro instrument to the US space agency (NASA), which leads the JWST venture.

On 20 September, NirSpec will be flown to Maryland's Goddard Space Flight Center for integration into the giant orbiting observatory.

Europe's major industrial commitments to JWST are now complete.

Mid-Infrared Instrument (Miri)
Its other instrument - the Mid-Infrared Instrument (Miri), which was assembled in the UK - was safely delivered to North America last year.

The one outstanding task - and it is a very onerous one - will be to launch JWST in October 2018.

This will be performed by an Ariane 5 rocket from Esa's Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

When I visited NirSpec in the Ottobrunn clean room last week, there was not much to see because the finished instrument was dressed for shipment in its protective thermal coat.

But if you could lift that covering, you would lay eyes on what appears to be an impossible optical maze.

NirSpec will be mounted just behind JWST's primary mirror and will sample the gathered light via a kind of periscope.

A series of mini-mirrors will then corral and condition this light, moving it towards a grating element where it can be sliced and diced into its component colours - its spectra.

Detectors are positioned at the end of the maze to read these colours and convert them into an electronic signal that can be transmitted to the ground.

All this is done in the near-infrared, in the wavelengths from 0.6 to 5 microns. This is the region of the electromagnetic spectrum where you would expect to pick up starlight that has been stretched on its 13-billion-year journey across an expanding cosmos.

An interesting aspect of NirSpec's design is that nearly half by weight of the instrument is made from ultra-stiff silicon carbide.

"The unique feature of silicon carbide is that it allows us to make structure and mirrors out of the same material," explains Astrium programme manager Ralf Maurer.

"This helps us survive the transition going from warm to cold; there is no deformation. And that gives us a very stable alignment of the optics."

James Webb Space Telescope: Spinning the Webb - Video

NASA is spinning a "Webb," and it is not about a spider, it's about a part of the James Webb Space Telescope that is being "spin-tested" in a centrifuge to prove it can withstand the rigors of space travel.

This video, called "Spinning a Webb," is part of an ongoing video series about the Webb telescope. The series, called "Behind the Webb," is produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., and takes viewers behind the scenes with engineers as they test the Webb telescope's components.

In the video institute host Mary Estacion takes the viewer to the giant centrifuge chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where the telescope's Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) was tested in an environment to simulate the acceleration forces it will endure during launch.

The instrument module, known as ISIM, is one of three major elements that make up the Webb telescope flight system.

ISIM will house Webb's four main instruments, which will detect light from distant stars and galaxies, and planets orbiting other stars.

Basically, the structure provides support for Webb's cameras and other instruments.

Estacion interviewed Bill Chambers, centrifuge project engineer at NASA Goddard, who explains why the center has the world's largest centrifuge.

Goddard's 140-foot-diameter centrifuge can accelerate a 2.5-ton payload up to 30 g, that is, 30 times Earth's normal gravity—well beyond the force experienced in a launch.

The most intense roller-coasters in the world top out at about 5 g, and then only for brief moments. The Webb equipment can experience between 6 g and 7 g because of vibration.

In the video, Estacion also talked with Eric Johnson, ISIM structure manager at NASA Goddard, about why the centrifuge was used and the stresses the machine will impose on the instrument module.

Johnson explained that the module was tested at seven times Earth's gravity to simulate the pull it will experience during launch, "and then when it gets to zero g way out in space, we have to show that it's the same shape as it was here on Earth."

Usually in centrifuge testing, engineers run the tests a little beyond actual environment conditions. They take the structural loading conditions that they expect to see during launch and then raise them by 25 percent.

Instruments should be able to handle actual conditions if they can survive the increased, simulated experience.

Two 1,250-horsepower motors power the centrifuge, which can spin up to 156 mph, more than 30 rotations per minute.

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.

JWST a Priority: Canadian Astronomers Battle Funding Cuts and Perceptions

The James Webb Space Telescope, a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is a stated priority of Canadian government astronomy funding. 

Other projects, astronomers say, are threatened by budget cuts.

CREDIT: ESA

Flashing a picture of the star HR 8799 and its four alien planets on a big screen, astronomer Andrew Cumming smiled.

"This is the most amazing picture in exoplanet science!" he exclaimed.

Cumming described how astronomers tracked minute variations in the system to study these alien worlds: "Over four years, we started to see one planet moving in its orbit," he told delegates of the Canadian Science Writers' Association during a talk at McGill University here June 7.

Cumming is a theoretical astrophysicist at the university who focuses on compact objects, particularly super-dense neutron stars, as well as exoplanets.

These days, though, his attention is somewhat distracted. There are changes afoot in Canadian astronomy funding.

Last year, at least one of the Canadian Space Agency's astronomy programs came close to the chopping block amid government cost-cutting, he said. Even today, many researchers are nervous.

"One always wants more invested in the field you're working in," Cumming told reporters, echoing concerns of several astronomers at the conference.



Research vs. business
Canadian astronomy receives funding principally from three government departments: the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Canadian National Research Council (NRC)

Money is tight these days in the Canadian government, however. Officials with the ruling Conservative party have said they are conscious of the federal budget deficit and must make cuts. Critics, however, argue that fundamental research is coming under attack.

In May, Tory officials said they would change the NRC's mandate to "invest in large-scale research projects that are directed by and for Canadian business."

In response, the Canadian Association of University Teachers called the change "short-sighted, misguided and unbalanced" because it would jeopardize the resources of universities that rely on NRC labs to perform research. Other researchers cried foul in the media.

Meanwhile, the CSA's budget for space exploration, which includes astronomy, will fall in coming years, according to the latest figures released by the agency in mid-2012.

From $148.2 million ($151 million in Canadian dollars) in 2011-12, funds will decrease 40 percent to $91.2 million ($93 million CDN) in 2014-15.

One initiative called the "space science enhancement program" (SSEP) was nearly canceled last year, Cumming said. The CSA website now has a notice saying it is suspended.

The top goal of SSEP was, according to the CSA website, "to maximize the scientific return to Canada by providing funding to space science projects and activities in the areas of initial instrument studies, data analysis and other space science-related academic studies."

Cumming added that with the James Webb Space Telescope taking $143.6 million ($146 million CDN) from Canadian space funds over 10 years, he worried the slices of research left would starve to death.

The over-budget successor telescope to Hubble is expected to launch in 2018, costing more than $8 billion, most of which is coming from NASA.

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.

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