Gorgeous new images of James Webb Space Telescope hardware being readied for testing.

• By Maggie Masetti
• April 13, 2012
• Comments Off on Gorgeous new images of James Webb Space Telescope hardware being readied for testing.

These brand-new photos show a critical piece of James Webb Space Telescope hardware being hoisted with a crane into NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s giant thermal vacuum chamber (called the Space Environment Simulator, or SES) to be tested to withstand the cold temperatures of space.

The hardware in question is called the OSIM, or the OTE (Optical Telescope Element) Simulator. (I know, that’s an acronym within an acronym!)

What is the OSIM? It basically simulates the actual telescope for the purposes of testing the science instruments before they fly on the observatory. The OSIM itself will never fly into space, but it has an important job verifying that the science cameras and spectrographs will function as planned.

The actual telescope, known as the OTE, is the eye of the James Webb Space Telescope observatory and includes all the mirrors as well as the structure they will be mounted on, called the backplane. The OTE mirrors will gather the light coming from space and provide it to the Webb’s science instruments. Webb needs a large mirror to collect as much light as possible to see galaxies from the beginning of the Universe and to detect other faint astronomical sources.

Be sure to read the photo feature for more information on this test and what’s next!