Inside the cleanrooms of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the international James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is beginning to take shape

MIRI integration into JWST payload module
Credit: NASA/C.Gunn

JWST is a future infrared space observatory with a collecting area more than two and a half times larger than Herschel – the largest infrared scientific telescope so far flown to space

The Webb Telescope is central to the UK Space Agency’s science programme which funds the UK’s involvement in the project

The STFC’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC) is leading the European team developing MIRI in a partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). A major part of the UK role was the Assembly Integration and Test (AIV) campaign at RAL Space

Dr Chris Castelli, Acting Director of Technology, Science and Exploration, said, “'MIRI represents the culmination of years of hard work by the European consortium responsible for building the instrument. Being the first instrument to be delivered and now integrated, MIRI demonstrates the UK's scientific and technical leadership in space science. I am enormously proud of the consortium's achievements'

In this image, the MIRI mid-infrared camera and spectrograph is being integrated into the science payload module of JWST. Here, MIRI is being held by a special balance beam (left), which is being manoeuvred using a precision overhead crane by the engineer at the base of the ladder

After installation into the payload module (right), the first parts of MIRI’s cooling system were attached to the instrument and the MIRI insulation shield was closed

Once in orbit, the telescope and the payload module will have a very low temperature of –233ºC to keep their own infrared emission from overwhelming the signals from the faint and distant astronomical targets that MIRI will study

But MIRI, wrapped in an insulation blanket protecting it from the ‘heat’ of the rest of the payload module, will be cooled even further, to –266ºC, the perfect temperature for its state-of-the art detectors

MIRI will be capable of penetrating thick layers of dust obscuring regions of intense star birth, it will see galaxies near the beginning of the Universe, and it will study sites of new planet formation and the composition of the interstellar medium

In addition to MIRI, ESA is also leading the development of another of JWST’s four instruments: NIRSpec, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph, which will obtain spectra of more than 100 galaxies or stars simultaneously to study star formation and chemical compositions of young distant galaxies

JWST is scheduled for launch in 2018 on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

UK SPAC AGENCY