Steel Assembly for JWST Installed in NASA Clean Room

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) construction process can now continue at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Recently, an impressive steel structure was delivered to a clean room at the Center, on which the telescope's components will be mounted.

The steel frame is called the optical assembly stand, and its purpose is to provide a foundation on which all the mirrors and scientific instruments that will go on the James Webb can be installed.

At this point, the most complex observatory ever proposed is set to cost more than $8.2 billion, and to be ready no earlier than 2018. However, there is still great support for the massive spacecraft, which will observe the Universe through 18 hexagonal main mirrors.

Several of the instruments that will go on the spacecraft, as well as the primary mirrors themselves, have already been completed and tested, and are ready for integration with other components. The tennis court-sized sunshield that will protect the JWST is also undergoing tests at this point.

The delivery of the assembly stand will now enable GSFC experts and NASA contractors to start putting the optical elements of the massive telescope together. Redondo Beach, California-based Northrop Grumman is GSFC's main contractor on building James Webb.

“This milestone is important as it marks the transition to the integration and testing phase for the Webb telescope's optical telescope element,” GSFC JWST Optical Telescope Element Manager Lee Feinberg said after the delivery was complete.

“Due to the excellent efforts of our teammate ITT Exelis, we have completed each of the major elements of equipment required to complete the assembly of the optical flight telescope,” Scott Willoughby explains/

“With the near completion of the final cryotest for the last six flight mirror segments, we are making great progress on the program,” adds the official, who is JWST program manager and vice president at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems.

The actual assembly process will begin in 2014, and will see all the components of the JWST – which will hopefully be completed by that time – installed on the U-shaped steel structure. Once the spacecraft is complete, it will be removed from the stand in its final configuration.

“The integration equipment is a critical piece of the Webb telescope program. Over the past three years, ITT Exelis has developed a risk reduction program to demonstrate the key elements of this equipment,” Rob Mitrevski explains.

“With the delivery of the assembly stand, all of the equipment is coming together in preparation for the telescope assembly effort,” he adds. The official is the vice president and general manager of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems at ITT Exelis Geospatial Systems.