James Webb Space Telescope Marks Manufacturing Milestone

SPACE SCOPES

A mirror blank, made from lightweight beryllium for the James Webb Space Telescope, is shown being prepared for x-ray inspection. Brush Wellman in Elmore, Ohio, fabricated 18 flight-mirror blanks under contract to prime contractor Northrop Grumman Corp.'s lead optical contractor, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. The technician draws 24 sections onto each blank using a felt-tip pen and then x-rays each separately to ensure quality. Photo Courtesy of Brush Wellman.

Redondo Beach CA (SPX) Aug 24, 2005
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team completed the initial step in manufacturing all the primary mirrors for the next-generation space observatory's telescope - an important program milestone.

Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor, leading the JWST design and development effort.

In the first major step, molten beryllium was compressed into 18 hexagonal units called "blanks," weighing 553 pounds and measuring 1. 5 meters (nearly five feet) from end-to-end.

These blanks are now moving through the second step in the fabrication process, precision machining and etching.

The manufacturing process is being performed by Brush Wellman Inc. in Ohio, Axsys Technologies in Alabama and Tinsley Laboratories in California under contract to Northrop Grumman's lead optical contractor, Ball Aerospace & Technologies. Brush Wellman was responsible for the initial mirror manufacturing.

"The primary mirror is on the critical path for the JWST mission," said Martin Mohan, JWST program manager at Northrop Grumman's Space Technology sector.

"Brush Wellman not only created the mirror blanks to very precise specifications, but also delivered the units ahead of schedule. This accomplishment helps to reduce the risk on this challenging program."

Mirrors move through manufacturing in a process that takes about 53 months. Following blank production at Brush Wellman, the mirror segments are precision machined at Axsys Technologies. This step reduces the weight of each segment from 553 pounds to 46 pounds and puts the correct optical prescription on the mirror.

The third, at Tinsley Laboratories, involves precision grinding and polishing of the optical surfaces. Finally, the mirrors are incorporated into optical assemblies and mounted on the telescope structure.

The Webb telescope features a 6.5-meter (20 feet) aperture primary mirror comprised of 18 beryllium segments and will be the largest deployable telescope ever launched.

Beryllium, one of the lightest of all metals, was selected as the mirror technology for its demonstrated track record operating at cryogenic temperatures (around - 370 degrees Fahrenheit) on space-based telescopes.

On orbit, JWST will peer into the infrared at great distances to search for answers to astronomers' fundamental questions about the birth and evolution of galaxies, the size and shape of the universe and the mysterious life cycle of matter. The space-based observatory will reside in an orbit 940,000 miles from Earth at the L2 Lagrange point.

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