Jan 24 2007
From The Space Library
NASA announced that engineers and scientists building the JWST had created a new technology called “microshutters,” which had successfully passed crucial environmental testing in December 2006 and had demonstrated the ability to withstand the stress of launch and placement in deep space. The 62,000 microshutters measured 100 by 200 microns—approximately the width of three to six human hairs. NASA had designed the microshutters to allow scientists to mask unwanted light from foreground objects, thus enabling the telescope to focus on the faint light of the earliest stars and galaxies that had formed in the universe. Behind the JWST microshutters, arranged in four identical grids, in a layout of 171 rows by 365 columns, engineers had placed an 8 million-pixel infrared detector, designed to record light passing through open shutters. The detector itself was a technological breakthrough. Murzy D. Jhabvala, Chief Engineer of Goddard’s Instrument Technology and Systems Division, explained that designing a telescope able to peer farther than the HST had required new technology.
NASA, “NASA Creates Microscopic Technology for Webb Space Telescope,” news release 07-014, 24 January 2007, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/jan/HQ_07014_Webb_microshutters.html (accessed 14 October 2009).
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