14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the American space agency announce that one of the segments on the flight spare primary mirror that will go on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is currently getting an incredibly sophisticated treatment, which will ensure its compliance with the harsh operational requirements of the mission.
The highly polished mirror segment is currently at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Calibration, Integration and Alignment Facility (CIAF).
The instrument is being loaded into the Configuration Measurement Machine, or CMM, which will measure its dimensional characteristics with extreme accuracy. The CMM is so precise that it can detect uneven features smaller than 0.1 microns, or about 1/400th the thickness of a single human hair.
NASA will repeat this procedure for each segment, both for the primary and secondary mirrors. The JWST is the most complex piece of technology ever developed for space observations, and also the first and only collapsible/foldable space telescope.