Join the Department of Physics and Astronomy for the 2023 Cooper Lecture featuring Bruce Dean of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Dean will speak on “The James Webb Space Telescope: Its Commissioning and Technology” from 6-7 p.m. Wednesday (March 8) in White Hall, Room G09.
This talk will discuss the origin of several key technologies as well as the commissioning process from the perspective of the telescope including launch, deployments and alignments. It will culminate with a summary of how well the telescope is performing and thoughts about the lessons learned as well as planned future space telescope missions.
The James Webb Space Telescope launched on Dec. 25, 2021. During the first 120 days of the mission, the telescope and mirrors were deployed and the 18 primary segments and secondary mirror were aligned from millimeters to nanometers. This process led to an optical system that is limited only by the laws of physics.
JWST is the first segmented, large cryogenic telescope that has been flown in space and its deployment was an incredible first step in the advancement of large space telescopes.