14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the American space agency announce that their newest planned space-based observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has just passed its most important challenge to date. The Mission Critical Design Review (MCDR) stage of the project referred to a thorough analysis of all science and engineering requirements for the new instrument. As the project passed the test, this means that every last system that will go on the final spacecraft will be integrated flawlessly.
The design and development efforts for the JWST are being led by the private, Redondo Beach, California-based company Northrop Grumman. The entire mission is being managed by experts at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in Greenbelt, Maryland. “I’m delighted by this news and proud of the Webb program’s great technical achievements. The independent team conducting the review confirmed the designs, hardware and test plans for Webb will deliver the fantastic capabilities always envisioned for NASA’s next major space observatory. The scientific successor to Hubble is making great progress,” says NASA Headquarters JWST program scientist Eric Smith.
“This program landmark is the capstone of seven years of intense, focused effort on the part of NASA, Northrop Grumman and our program team members. We have always had high confidence that our observatory design would meet the goals of this pioneering science mission. This achievement testifies to that, as well as to our close working partnership with NASA,” adds Northrop Grumman Space Systems sector vice president and general manager David DiCarlo. The MCDR reunited all other past reviews under a single effort, which also included multiple modeling and analysis tools. Additional investigations of the telescope's progress are scheduled for this year and the next.
NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) are working together on bringing JWST online. It is scheduled to be the replacement of the venerable Hubble telescope, which this Saturday celebrated its 20th anniversary. The instrument will be the largest ever deployed to space, and will be able to peer deep within the Universe, with unprecedented levels of detail. However, significant challenges and obstacles are associated with the mission, hence the satisfaction of NASA officials with the results of the MCDR, Space Fellowship reports.