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NASA ANNOUNCES
CONTRACT FOR NEXT-GENERATION SPACE TELESCOPE NAMED AFTER SPACE PIONEER
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Design for NGST | | | NASA
today selected TRW, Redondo Beach, Calif., to build
a next-generation successor
to the Hubble Space Telescope in
honor of the man who led NASA in the early
days of the
fledgling aerospace agency. The
space-based observatory will be known as the James Webb Space Telescope, named
after James E. Webb, NASA's second administrator. While Webb is best known for
leading Apollo and a series of lunar exploration programs that landed the
first
humans on the Moon, he also initiated a vigorous space
science program, responsible
for more than 75 launches during
his tenure, including America's first interplanetary
explorers. "It
is fitting that Hubble's successor be named in honor of
James Webb. Thanks
to his efforts, we got our first glimpses
at the dramatic landscapes of outer
space," said NASA
Administrator Sean O'Keefe. "He took our nation
on its first
voyages of exploration, turning our imagination into reality.
Indeed, he laid the foundations at NASA for one of the most
successful
periods of astronomical discovery. As a result,
we're rewriting the textbooks
today with the help of the
Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory
and, in
2010, the James Webb Telescope." The
James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled for launch in
2010 aboard an expendable
launch vehicle. It will take about
three months for the spacecraft to reach
its destination, an
orbit 940,000 miles or 1.5 million kilometers in space,
called the second Lagrange Point or L2, where the spacecraft
is balanced
between the gravity of the Sun and the Earth. Unlike
Hubble, space shuttle astronauts will not service the
James Webb Space Telescope
because it will be too far away. The
most important advantage of this L2 orbit is that a
single-sided sun shield
on only one side of the observatory
can protect Webb from the light and heat
of both the Sun and
Earth. As a result, the observatory can be cooled to very
low
temperatures without the use of complicated refrigeration
equipment.
These low temperatures are required to prevent the
Webb's own heat radiation
from exceeding the brightness of
the distant cool astronomical objects. Before
and during launch, the mirror will be folded up. Once
the telescope is placed
in its orbit, ground controllers will
send a message telling the telescope
to unfold its high-tech
mirror petals. To
see into the depths of space, the James Webb Space
Telescope is currently
planned to carry instruments that are
sensitive to the infrared wavelengths
of the electromagnetic
spectrum. The new telescope will carry a near-infrared
camera, a multi-object spectrometer and a mid-infrared
camera/spectrometer. The
James Webb Space Telescope will be able to look deeper
into the universe than
Hubble because of the increased light-
collecting power of its larger mirror
and the extraordinary
sensitivity of its instruments to infrared light. Webb's
primary mirror will be at least 20 feet in diameter,
providing much more
light gathering capability than Hubble's
eight-foot primary mirror. The
telescope's infrared capabilities are required to help
astronomers understand
how galaxies first emerged out of the
darkness that followed the rapid expansion
and cooling of the
universe just a few hundred million years after the big
bang.
The light from the youngest galaxies is seen in the infrared
due
to the universe's expansion. Looking
closer to home, the James Webb Space Telescope will
probe the formation of
planets in disks around young stars,
and study supermassive black holes in
other galaxies. Under
the terms of the contract valued at $824.8 million, TRW
will design and fabricate
the observatory's primary mirror
and spacecraft. TRW also will be responsible
for integrating
the science instrument module into the spacecraft as well
as
performing the pre-flight testing and on-orbit checkout of
the observatory. The
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., manages the
James Webb Space
Telescope for the Office of Space Science at
NASA Headquarters in Washington.
The program has a number of
industry, academic and government partners, as
well as the
European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
August
07, 2002 - BEYOND THE UNIVERSE: NEXT GENERATION SPACE TELESCOPE
TO INVESTIGATE THE BEGINNING OF THE COSMOS
NGST
CONCEPT ANIMATION
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NGST
is designed to make observations in the far visible to the mid-infrared part of
the spectrum. This wavelength coverage is different from that of the HST, which
covers the range from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared. The NGST will have
a primary mirror diameter more than twice as large as HST giving it much more
light gathering capability. The NGST will also operate much farther from Earth
giving it much simplified operations and pointing requirements compared with HST.
Courtesy: TRW
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| | | Animation
1 | | | UNLOCKING
THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMIC DARK ZONE
Birth of the Very First Stars - Primordial matter in the early universe consisted
of just hydrogen and helium gas. These gas clouds were the seeds of future clouds,
stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies that populated the universe. In these
primordial conditions, stars formed from denser condensations in the clouds. Under
the action of its own gravity, the gas in one of these dense knots starts falling
toward its center. Attracted by the stellar seed, more material starts falling,
forming a swirling disk of gas. The disk collects the falling gas and funnels
it onto the surface of the growing star. The star grows quickly and gains the
energy released by the falling gas, and in the process, dissipates any excess
of material and energy by ejecting polar jets. With
time, the stellar body grows in mass and shrinks in size, becoming denser and
hotter. Eventually, the temperature at the center of the star becomes so high
that hydrogen atoms can effectively merge together to form helium, releasing large
amounts of energy (light and heat). The swirling disk is dissipated by the action
of the increased luminosity, and no more gas falls on the star. These
primordial stars are big and very bright, and have short lifetimes: in just a
few million years they consume all their nuclear fuel and end their lives in catastrophic
supernova explosions, leaving a black hole behind. These explosions eject a large
quantity of gas that has been enriched in heavier elements, such as carbon, oxygen,
and silicon. These elements are essential for the formation of Earth-like planets
and, eventually, the birth of life on them. Courtesy: NASA Stills
from the movie: Top
left: Primordial cloud
Top Right: Primordial disk
Middle left: Disk clearing
Middle right: Nuclear fusion
Bottom: Supernova
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| | | Animation
2 | | | Supernova
and Exploding Starfield - Clouds of gas and stars are swirling together, forming
the basis of proto-galaxies. At the center of a proto-galaxy so much gas, stars,
black holes and other stellar remnants clump together that a massive black hole
starts to form. The central massive black will accrete most of its surrounding
material falling in, but a small fraction is ejected along two very energetic
jets. If one of these energy beams is pointed at us, we may be seeing it as a
quasar. Quasars will be among the furthest objects NGST will be able to see, and
astronomers will be able to study all intervening gas clouds against these background
light beacons. Courtesy: NASA Stills
from the animation: Top
left: Star grouping
Top right: Early galaxy
Bottom left: Quasar closeup
Bottom right: Quasar long view
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| | | Animation
3 | | | The
Building Blocks of the Universe - Many proto-galaxies are forming, drawn together
by their mutual gravitational attraction. They start to collide and merge together,
building larger and larger galaxies. Disk like spiral galaxies will form if the
inflow of material is smooth and consists mainly of gas, rounder elliptical galaxies
will form if the collisions are more violent and head-on. On
even larger scales, gravity has been pulling galaxies together over the last 13
billion years in structures resembling a sort of foam; we have large voids nearly
devoid of galaxies, large sheets and filaments of galaxies where two bubbles meet
and we have galaxies streaming along these filaments toward galaxy clusters, the
points where several bubbles meet. NGST
will look past all these foreground galaxies, looking deep into space and back
in time, to find the earliest star formation, galaxy formation and quasars. The
treasure we are looking for will be hidden as a needle in a haystack of foreground
galaxies. Courtesy:
NASA Stills
from the animation: Left:
Hubble Deep Field 1
Right: Hubble Deep Field 2
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| | | Animation
4 | | | Unlocking
the Mysteries of the Cosmic Dark Zone - Composite of all three animations. Courtesy:
NASA
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2 | | | PROBING
THE DARK ZONE - An NGST simulation created by using the Hubble Telescope's
Deep Field image. The observatory will look deeper into the universe than Hubble
Space Telescope. The Hubble Deep Field image provided the "deepest-ever"
view of the universe. Courtesy: NASA
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GREATEST HITS - Hubble's eyes have provided us with a greater understanding
of objects that have tantalized astronomers. HST has taken us on a trip back through
time, past planets; allowed us to witness the birth and death of stars; revealed
nearby galaxies and shown us the youngest galaxies ever seen… a billion or
so years after the "big bang." However, our distant past remains shrouded
in mystery. NGST will push the envelope further and let astronomers delve deeper
and further back in time to better understand the origins of the Universe. See
all the images under "Viewable Images" on the right hand navigation
bar.
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| | | Movie
1 | | | INTERVIEW
EXCERPTS WITH BERNARD SEERY, NGST PROJECT MANAGER, GSFC Back
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