14 DAY TRIAL // Engineers with the Northrop Grumman Corporation announced that the 14 tubes, which would make up half of the Mid Boom Assembly on the NASA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), had just been completed. This marks an important milestone in the observatory's development.
The MBA is made up of 14 graphite composite tubes and the Stored Tubular Extendible Member (STEM) deployment mechanism. The tubes are all attached to portions of the tennis court-sized sunshield that will prevent stray radiations from entering JWST's amazingly-sensitive detectors.
Needless to say, the shield cannot be deployed in its final configuration, but has to be extended once the spacecraft reaches the L2 Lagrangian orbital point. The 14 tubes – 7 on either side of the telescope – will unfold the sunshield, while the STEM mechanism will provide the necessary tension.
“These are highly specialized, one-of-a kind structures. Completing them on schedule is a major step forward for the fabrication of the flight sunshield system,” Northrop Grumman JWST sunshield manager James Flynn explains.