Northrop Grumman preps James Webb Space Telescope for mission to peer 13.5 billion years in the past

[Judi Lynn]

By Sandy Mazza, Daily Breeze
POSTED: 05/30/17, 7:51 PM PDT | UPDATED: 47 SECS AGO


Engineers covered in sterile white suits, with only their eyes visible, carefully tested and retested parts of the world’s most powerful space telescope in development at Northrop Grumman Corp. in Redondo Beach on Tuesday.

The James Webb Space Telescope, built to be NASA’s successor to the Hubble Space Telescope at a cost of $8.7 billion, will travel 1 million miles beyond Earth’s atmosphere and peer 13.5 billion years into the past.

But, once it leaves Earth, it has to operate perfectly.

As part of ongoing rigorous testing, the telescope’s spacecraft and sun shield have remained in Northrop’s high-bay clean room while the 21-foot-tall, ultra-smooth primary mirror was recently flown to Maryland and Texas for tests.

More:
http://www.sbsun.com/science/20170530/northrop-grumman-preps-james-webb-space-telescope-for-mission-to-peer-135-billion-years-in-the-past

[pangaia]

1. 13.5 billion years is beyond anything I can even begin to comprenend...

[Binkie The Clown]

2. I'd rather they peered 50 years into the past and...

recovered all those lost Dr. Who episodes.