NASA’s massive, $10 billion telescope
prepares to launch in 2021.
GOLDEN
EYE
BY LAURA MALLONEE
LAURA MALLONEE (@LauraMallonee) writes about
photography for wired.
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If you were a rogue bee buzzing on the moon, this
heat-detecting honeycomb could find you. But rest
easy, tiny friend: The $10 billion James Webb Space
Telescope will have bigger concerns. Once it is blasted
into orbit in 2021, it will seek out water on Earth-like
planets, stars being born, and remote objects formed
in the first 100 million years after the Big Bang.
Webb’s precision comes from its 21.3-foot primary
mirror, nearly three times as big as Hubble’s. Its fold-
ing, hivelike design is formed by 18 lightweight beryl-
lium hexagons that work as one; to sharpen focus, 126
small motors pivot these segments in increments as
small as one ten-thousandth the width of a grain of lily
pollen. They collect 269.1 square feet of light, 50 times
more than NASA’s current infrared space telescope,
Spitzer. A gold coating enhances the mirror’s reflection
of long-wave light, including infrared radiation created
13.6billion years ago, further back than any telescope
has ever seen. “The telescope is a time machine,” says
Nobel laureate and lead scientist John Mather. “You see
things as they were when light was sent out.”
Some 10,000 astrophysicists, engineers, and chem-
ists have worked on Webb. Mather’s been at it the lon-
gest, since 1996, when NASA left him a voicemail asking
whether he wanted to help build its biggest telescope yet.
He led the team at NASA’s Goddard facility in Maryland
that identified 10 necessary technologies that didn’t yet
exist, including a tennis-court-sized plastic sun shield
that ensures accurate infrared detection by chilling the
observatory to –370 degrees Fahrenheit. (At right, Webb
prepares for testing in NASA’s cryogenic vacuum cham-
ber in Houston.) The project, initially expected to cost
$500 million and launch in 2007, has faced challenges
(leaks, rips, Congress). But now it’s on track to launch
from French Guiana in a European Ariane 5 rocket.
Hovering 1 million miles from Earth, Webb will beam
down 458 gigabits of data a day for up to 10 years,
potentially revealing the deepest mysteries of the uni-
verse’s origins. Mather imagines “there’s something out
there we would never have guessed.”
