The new James Webb telescope has passed a major milestone in its quest to image the first stars to shine in the cosmos.
Controllers on Tuesday completed the deployment of the space observatory’s giant kite-shaped sun shield.
Only with this tennis court-sized barrier will Webb have the sensitivity to detect the signals coming from the most distant objects in the Universe.
Commissioning work will now concentrate on unpacking the telescope’s mirrors, the largest of which is 6.5m wide.
The deployment of the five-membrane sun shield is a triumph for the engineering teams at the US space agency (NASA) and the American aerospace manufacturer Northrop Grumman.
There were many who doubted the wisdom of a design that included so many motors, gears, pulleys and cables.
But years of testing on full-scale and sub-scale models paid dividends as controllers first separated the shield’s different layers and then tensioned them.
The fifth and final membrane – which like the other four had the thickness of a human hair – was locked into place at 16:58 GMT.
“Unfolding Webb’s sun shield in space is an incredible milestone, crucial to the success of the mission,” said Greg Robinson, Webb’s program director at Nasa Headquarters.
“Thousands of parts had to work with precision for this marvel of engineering to fully unfurl. The team has accomplished an audacious feat with the complexity of this deployment – one of the boldest undertakings yet for Webb.”
It’s worth noting that all the previous testing was done on Earth, under gravity conditions. This was the first time the shield had been unfurled in the unique “Zero-G” environment of space. “The first time, and we nailed it,” enthused Alphonso Stewart, Nasa’s Webb deployment systems lead.
“There was a lot of joy, a lot of relief,” added Hillary Stock, the sunshield deployments lead at Northrop.
