Q & A with Dr. John Mather on the James Webb Space Telescope | Universe Today

"The James Webb Space Telescope JWST is the much anticipated long awaited "next generation" telescope. Planned for launch in 2013 JWST has been touted as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. With it astronomers hope to look back in time to when the universe was just 200 million years old and see the first stars and galaxies."

[T]his telescope will see farther back in time with its infrared capability and its huge aperture; it will see



through dust clouds to see where stars are being born; it will see things that are room temperature like you and me planets or young stars being born. All those things can be seen directly with the infrared capability we have on this new telescope. Most of the work will be done in infrared with some capability

in the visible range. *** The hardest thing to build was the mirror because we needed something that is way bigger than Hubble. But you can t possibly lift something that big or fit it into a rocket so you need something that is lighter weight but nonetheless larger so it has to have the ability to fold up. The mirror



is made of light-weight beryllium and has 18 hexagonal segments.

The telescope folds up like a butterfly in its chrysalis and will have to completely undo it self. ***The sun shield is completely new and it too will have to deploy. So what was wrapped up into a small cylinder

relatively speaking becomes a giant shield about as big as a tennis court. It s huge.

via Q & A with Dr. John Mather on the James Webb Space Telescope | Universe Today.