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VIDEOS

NIST Colloquium Series: (Dr. Gregory Wirth) NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope: The Engineering Marvel Opening New Windows on the Cosmos

Appears In

NIST Colloquium Series

Decades of eager anticipation turned to ecstasy for astronomers worldwide as the powerful new James Webb Space Telescope successfully launched on Christmas morning 2021. The observatory’s giant primary mirror – the largest ever deployed in orbit – was delicately folded to fit into the rocket, successfully deployed in space, and then aligned over a 4-month commissioning campaign. This talk shares the key technological innovations that enabled NASA to build this telescope, describes how the JWST Wavefront Science team focused the optics, and reviews the stunning science images astronomers are acquiring with this powerful new tool for astrophysics.

Uploaded On

October 24, 2022

Collection

NIST Colloquium Series