The Webb Telescope's 'Golden Spider'
A second shot taken from inside a large thermal-vacuum chamber called the Space Environment Simulator (SES), at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Engineers have blanketed the structure of the Optical Telescope Simulator (OSIM) with special insulating material to help control its temperature while it goes into the deep freeze testing that mimics the chill of space that Webb will ultimately experience in its operational orbit over 1 million miles from Earth. The OSIM's job is to generate a beam of light just like the one that the real telescope optics will feed into the actual flight instruments.
For more information: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/7851321490/in/pho...
Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
4,740
views
1
fave
0
comments
Taken on June 5, 2012