Right here, NASA began assembling the future
of astronomy.
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A million miles from Earth, NASA's James Webb Space
Telescope will look into the early universe for traces
of infrared light.
One side of the telescope will face the endless reaches
of deep space.
A void characterized by cold so extreme, it hover just above
absolute zero.
The other side faces the sun, enabling the telescope's
solar panels to drink in sunlight, and provide power
for all of Webb's systems.
Seperating these two extremes are 5 stunningly
delicate layers, dividing endless day from eternal night.
The sunshield blocks heat from the Sun, Earth, and Moon from
Webb's mirrors an instruments.
Each of the layers is made out of a material called kapton,
that has been coated with alluminum.
The two hottest layers, the ones closest to the Sun, have
an additional layer consisting of a special silicon that gives
them that pinkish tint.
The coating are then electrically conductive,
so that the layers of the sunshield can be grounded to
the rest of the telescope, and not build up a static
electric charge.
The thickest layer of the sunshield is 2000th of
an inch or 500th of a milimeter thick.
A clue to the extraordinarily delicate nature of this
remarkable structure.
In terms of surface area, each of the layers is as large as a
tennis court, creating a gigantic challenge to get
it into space.
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Engineers developed a release system to carefully unfold and
control the ultra fine sunshield layers in space.
Special stitching on each layer called rip stops prevents the
possibility of a tear spreading across the sunshield layers.
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Once unfolded, Webb's sunshield becomes a parasol, protecting
precision instruments from unwanted heat, and opening
a pathway to the instruments to cool to the super cold
temperature of deep space.
And this enables the pursuit of some of the
biggest scientific questions.
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