James Webb Space Telescope undergoing Sunshield tests

Published on September 19, 2011 3:40 pm PT - By Jim Duran - Writer - Article Editor and Approved - Warren Miller

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(TheWeatherSpace.com) - The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes called JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope. The project is working to a 2018 launch date.

Webb will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way Galaxy. Webb will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System.

Webb's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.

Webb will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won't fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open once Webb is in outer space. Webb will reside in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.

The observatory is dominated visually by the sunshield subsystem, which separates the observatory into a warm sun-facing side and a cold anti-sun side.

The observatory will be pointed so that the Sun, Earth and Moon are always on one side, and the sunshield will act like a parasol, keeping the Optical Telescope Element and the Integrated Science Instrument Module cool by keeping them in the shade and protecting them from the heat of the sun and warm spacecraft bus electronics.

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

When fully deployed, the sunshield that will be about the size of a regulation tennis court.

Why does the sunshield have five layers instead of just a single thick one? Each successive layer of the sunshield is cooler than the one below. The heat radiates out from between the layers, and the vacuum between the layers is a very good insulator. One big thick sunshield would conduct the heat from the bottom to the top more than 5 layers separated by vacuum.

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