The Beauty of Webb's Mirrors

By land, air and sea, when it’s time to travel, Webb covers the gamut of transportation. Once packed into STTARS, Webb travels slowly over land before taking a flight aboard a massive military transport plane. Despite the C-5 Galaxy’s massive size, the STTARS container just barely squeezes under the top of the plane’s cargo hold. The spacious belly of the C-5 Galaxy was designed to carry U.S. military tanks. Webb gets the plane all to itself. When traveling on land, Webb is carefully chauffeured by a semi-truck. The ride is slow - approximately 5 mph (8 kph). A French cargo ship will ferry the fully assembled Webb telescope, inside STTARS, to its launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. Related pages

Scientists and engineers finish installing the primary mirrors on NASA's next-generation space observatory. This time-lapse video shows the months-long process of installing all 18 primary mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope. The mirrors were packed up in special shipping canisters for shipping from the factory to Greenbelt, Maryland. Scientists inspect the gold coating of one of the telescope's mirrors in a clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Engineers used a robotic arm to place the mirrors onto the telescope structure. Each mirror is about 4.2 feet across and weighs 88 pounds. All 18 mirrors are seen fully installed. The black protective panels covering the mirrors will be removed prior to Webb's launch in 2018. For More InformationSee [http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-james-webb-space-telescope-primary-mirror-fully-assembled](http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-james-webb-space-telescope-primary-mirror-fully-assembled) Related pages