James Webb Space Telescope

[molesworth]

What is the Scottish-built instrument?

It's the "Mid InfraRed Instrument" or MIRI, which has been built and tested at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre at the University of Edinburgh :

https://www.technologysi.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/MIRI.aspx

I got a look at it during development a few years back during a tour of the facility as part of a conference at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.  It promises to deliver some very high quality results.

[bknight]

I just saw this this morning.  Another delay with scheduled launch 31/10/2021.

https://knpr.org/npr/2020-07/nasa-pushes-back-launch-date-webb-space-telescope-citing-covid-19?gclid=Cj0KCQiA4L2BBhCvARIsAO0SBdY4myIgNVGugvh4htu4HgxYggUY0ZGdNtU4fRibiYm6XAOY_PMy7xAaArwJEALw_wcB

Uggggg

[apollo16uvc]

At this point I am afraid that materials are ageing that were never meant to be in earth atmosphere for so long.

What about the plating on the mirrors? the filters, the optical system, the sensors.


If this fails to properly deploy we won't have anything of this scale for the next 50 years.


Do you think that having several smaller space telescopes in sync will be the future for large aperture space telescopes, instead of building a single massive one?

[raven]

Yeah, I was thinking earlier we might have a Galileo high gain antenna situation on our hands, only it's the whole bloody mirror and/or the sun shield. Damn, I really hope not;  not only would that would be absolute mud in NASA's eye, I really want this beauty to work. Being able to fold up mirrors is going to be a boon for future space telescopes.