[slate]
So
the James Webb Space Telescope is Hubble's scientific successor.
And I like to think of it as NASA's vehicle for the deepest space exploration
that humanity can do. It will allow us to see
farther back in time, to the time when the very first stars and galaxies
were being born. Additionally it's different from Hubble in that
it's an infrared optimized telescope, and so this means
it will allow us to peer through clouds of gas and dust in our own galaxy
where stars and planets are being born today.
[slate]
To make sure any kind of spacecraft works, what we need to do is a lot of
is testing here on Earth before we launch it into space.
So we test things at the very smallest component level and then we
assemble them into larger structures and we test it at that level. And we
assemble them into even larger structures and we test it at that level.
So it's through this process of incremental build and test as we like to
call it that we assure ourselves that the structure that we eventually
launch will perform as we need it to.
[slate]
Short answer is of course
very carefully. So you want to test all the relevant
environments or the things that will put the hardware through stressing
situations. And so you want to test for things like will it survive launch.
Will it survive the extremely cold temperatures minus 400
Fahrenheit it has to. Will it deploy, fold out, like it needs to.
And if you go to the Goddard Space Flight Center right now
in the cleanroom there they have the telescope deployed and there they're doing optical
testing. So after you've done some of these other tests, deployment or
launch vibration, you have to make sure your optics still work
and you do optical testing of the telescope.
[slate]
I guarantee you that the scientific
community will use Webb to study the TRAPPIST-1 system. I was at a science
conference last week and this was among the hot topics that were discussed there.
The community if very excited to use NASA's
next great telescope to study exoplanet systems and so things
like the TRAPPIST-1 systems and possibly other nearby exoplanets will be among
the first things that Webb looks at once it starts its science operations.
[slate]
You can go
to NASA.gov or you can go to JWST.NASA.gov
to see lots of information about the Webb. There's information about
engineering behind it. There are thousands of images and there are videos
about it. There's discussions of the science that we've planned for the mission
and even a little bit about some of the people who are building the Webb.