By NASA
January 19, 2022
Credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight
Recently, the Webb team began moving the observatorys individual mirror sections out of their launch positions. Today, we hear from Erin Wolf, Webb program manager at Ball Aerospace, about the completion of that process:
” Today, the James Webb Space Telescope group finished the mirror section implementations. Using six motors that release each sector roughly half the length of a paper clip, these actuators clear the mirrors from their launch restraints and offer each section adequate space to later on be adjusted in other instructions to the optical beginning position for the upcoming wavefront positioning procedure. Even versus berylliums strength, which is six times higher than that of steel, these ROC actuators separately form the curvature of each mirror segment to set the preliminary parabolic shape of the primary mirror.
” Next up in the wavefront process, we will be moving mirrors in the micron and nanometer varies to reach the final optical positions for an aligned telescope. The procedure of telescope alignment will take around 3 months.”
— Erin Wolf, James Webb Space Telescope Program Manager, Ball Aerospace