The Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) - © NASA/Chris Gunnįor this component Leonardo built a sophisticated, high-precision cryogenic mechanism, known as the Refocusing Mechanism Assembly (RMA). Leonardo contributed to this extraordinary telescope by providing key elements of a crucial instrument – the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), the infrared image spectrograph for which ESA is responsible. The spectrographs of the JWST were designed to observe infrared signals billions of light years away and to process their complex information. The more the Universe expands, the more the light signals become slow and precious. The eye of the JWST will scan the most remote corners of space, searching around in the midst of galaxies so far away that perhaps they are just the final glow of a memory, exploring the early stages of the Universe 13 billion years ago, only a few hundred million years following the Big Bang. Scanning in the dark to capture the invisible The image is then stabilised by a fourth mirror before it reaches the lenses of the optics chamber that will capture the image. A secondary mirror, to which the primary mirror converges the reflection of the signals, then sends them to a third mirror placed in the core structure, where the optics chamber and spectrographs are located. There is a primary, concave mirror which is 6.5 metres in diameter, made up of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-plated beryllium. In a task such as the one entrusted to the JWST telescope, everything depends on its ability to see, which is determined by a system of mirrors that exchange the image between each other. In deep space, where there are no borders and everything disappears into the infinite, there is a need for an acute, precise view. It is a gem of engineering and technology, equipped with the largest astronomical mirror that has ever flown in space, new sophisticated scientific instruments and a sunshield as large as a tennis court.ĭeployment test of Webb’s secondary mirror - © NASA/C. The JWST was designed to provide answers to unresolved questions about the Universe and to make revolutionary discoveries in all fields of astronomy.
It is a crucial mission – the study of the Universe’s evolution – that has been entrusted to the mirrors, lenses and spectrographs of the JWST, the successor of the Hubble telescope, which has been collecting data and precious information on the entire Universe for the past 30 years.Īrp 86 - © ESAHubble and NASA, Dark Energy Survey, J.
The visionary project of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is looking beyond human imagination, to reveal to us what is hidden in the remote abysses of the Universe. Named after James Webb, the second administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo programmes, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will revolutionise our knowledge of the Universe. Now the telescope is located in an area called the second Lagrange point (L2), where the influences of the Earth, Moon and Sun counterbalance each other, and it has begun a lengthy phase of aligning optical instruments to be able to start its scientific mission. One month after its launch from the base in Kourou, French Guiana, the James Webb Space Telescope, carried by an Ariane 5 rocket, reached its observation point 1.5 million kilometres from Earth.
0 kommentar(er)
