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Posted on 01/18/2010 4:25:05 PM PST by KevinDavis
REDONDO BEACH, Calif., Jan. 18, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The first primary mirror segment of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has met flight specifications at ambient temperatures, the result of a process that has been six years in the making. Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC - News) is leading the design and development effort for the space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
As I recall, so did Hubble.... but they still had to fit a repair lens to it.
The article does say
“The mirror segments have undergone a series of polishing and cryotesting cycles.”
I forgot to add
“The mirror segment, an engineering development unit, was successfully polished to an accuracy of less than 20 nanometers, or smaller than a millionth of an inch. The process, called cryo-null figuring, ensures that when the mirror reaches cryogenic temperatures, it will change its shape into the exact optical prescription needed for its mission.”
It’s a mirror that can fix itself if there is a problem!
It was micro gravity that the Hubble people screwed up, IIRC.
jeez you’d think it was rocket science or something.
Most people are lucky to find their way across town and yet so many insist on looking down on people attempting the nearly impossible.
I’d like to don a spacesuit and ride in the James Webb’s “cage” with my eyeball up against the biggest Nagler ever made! :)
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Well, let’s just say that NASA is such a bureaucratic organization that I have severe doubts they actually learn their lessons.
"To achieve the exacting specifications for the mirror, Perkin-Elmer used an optics template, a tubular array of smaller mirrors and lenses linked by connecting rods, to guide the grinding and polishing processes. When the Allen committee tested this template assembly, it found that there was a critical error of 1.3 mm (0.05 in.) in the placement of the template's components. The Hubble mirror was carefully fashioned to match exactly this error in the template." (link)
According to Wikipedia, it’s named for a former administrator of NASA, now deceased, not for the classless senator from Virginia.
Now test it at 4 degrees Kelvin.
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