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'World's Most Magnificent Time Machine,' the James Webb Space Telescope, Leaving Houston

Source: https://www.space.com/

It survived a hurricane and is now off to earthquake territory: The James Webb Space Telescope has come out of its deep freeze and will soon leave Houston to unite with its sun shield and spacecraft bus in California to prepare for a 2019 launch.

NASA officials updated media on the megatelescope's status and described trials yet to come in a teleconference yesterday (Jan. 10) from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We're extremely elated to be here, especially after the successful completion of our cryovacuum and optical testing of the world's most magnificent time machine, the Webb telescope," Mark Voyton, the manager for the Optical Telescope Element and Integrated Science Instrument Module, said during the news conference.

The telescope's mirrors and instrumentation emerged from Johnson's enormous cryovacuum chamber, Chamber A, two months ago after a series of tests to confirm its enormous primary mirror — consisting of 18 hexagonal segments — and its science instruments could work to focus and track starlight in the airless cold of space.

When it launches, Webb will be the largest space telescope in the world. With seven times the collecting area of the Hubble Space Telescope and ultracool operating temperatures, it will be able to detect infrared light from the earliest stars and galaxies and even analyze the atmospheres of distant planets passing in front of their stars.

Read more: https://www.space.com/39356-james-webb-space-...uston.html

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