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Universe Today
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Image Credit: Universe Today
Tracing the Big Ideas that Led to Webb
- Members of the James Webb Space Telescope original design team has released a brief history of document called Theory of Operations which describes the design decisions, how they were made and implemented.
- The development of a successor to the Hubble space telescope appeared to require a 30-year lobbying, building and testing scenario.
- Initial design requirements were hazy but a consensus between innovators supposed that the telescope should be able to look into the infrared spectrum.
- Fortunately, NASA’s Advanced Concepts Office had already worked on several designs for a next-gen space telescope.
- During the late 1980s and early 1990s, several workshops were held to discuss different design trade-offs in the Next Generation Space Telescope’s design.
- Budget constraints at the Space Telescope and Science Institute proved to be a challenge.
- An initial approach was the Very Large Space Telescope which was mainly Hubble with a bigger mirror.
- The telescope had originally been proposed back in 1986 and subsequently had several more preliminary design iterations.
- The NGST was designed to be located at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point rather than on the Moon or in orbit around Earth.
- After design refinement, manufacturing, and testing, the JWST was launched successfully. It has been providing us with fascinating pictures from every corner of space.
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