The primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope consisting of 18 hexagonal mirrors looks like a giant puzzle piece standing in the massive clean room of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Appropriately, combined with the rest of the observatory, the mirrors will help piece together puzzles scientists have been trying to solve throughout the cosmos. Webb's primary mirror will collect light for the observatory in the scientific quest to better understand our solar system and beyond. Using these mirrors and Webb's infrared vision scientists will peer back over 13.5 billion years to see the first stars and galaxies forming out of the darkness of the early universe. Unprecedented infrared sensitivity will help astronomers to compare the faintest, earliest galaxies to today's grand spirals and ellipticals, helping us to understand how galaxies assemble over billions of years. Webb will see behind cosmic dust clouds to see where stars and planetary systems are being born. It will also help reveal information about atmospheres of planets outside our solar system, and perhaps even find signs of the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe. The Webb telescope was mounted upright after a "center of curvature" test conducted at Goddard. This initial center of curvature test ensures the integrity and accuracy, and test will be repeated later to verify those same properties after the structure undergoes launch environment testing. In the photo, two technicians stand before the giant primary mirror.#nasa
More from NASA
Dusting off a rock on Mars November 1, 2017 This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows effects of using the rover's wire-bristled Dust Removal Tool (DRT) on a rock target called "Christmas Cove." The tool brushed an area about 2.5 inches (6 centimeters) across on Sept. 16, 2017, during the 1,118th Martian day, or sol of Curiosity's work on Mars. MAHLI took this image later the same sol. Both DRT and MAHLI are on the turret of tools at the end of Curiosity's arm. The site is partway up "Vera Rubin Ridge" on lower Mount Sharp, in an area where reconnaissance imaging with science filters revealed variability in indications of the mineral hematite. Removing dust from part of the Christmas Cove target was part of an experiment to check whether dust is subduing the apparent indications of hematite in some of the area's bedrock. The brushed area's purplish tint in this MAHLI image, accentuated even more when observed with science filters of the rover's Mast Camera, is characteristic of fine-grained hematite. Brushing of this target also exposed details in the fine layering and bright veins within the bedrock of this part of Vera Rubin Ridge. The image is oriented so that sunlight comes from upper left. Layers are lower (older) toward lower right. MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover. More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. Credit Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS #nasa
Clouds Sailing Overhead on Mars, Enhanced August 9, 2017 Wispy clouds float across the Martian sky in this accelerated sequence of enhanced images from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. The rover's Navigation Camera (Navcam) took these eight images over a span of four minutes early in the morning of the mission's 1,758th Martian day, or sol (July 17, 2017), aiming nearly straight overhead. They have been processed by first making a "flat field' adjustment for known differences in sensitivity among pixels and correcting for camera artifacts due to light reflecting within the camera, and then generating an "average" of all the frames and subtracting that average from each frame. This subtraction results in emphasizing any changes due to movement or lighting. The clouds are also visible, though fainter, in a raw image sequence from these same observations. On the same Martian morning, Curiosity also observed clouds near the southern horizon. The clouds resemble Earth's cirrus clouds, which are ice crystals at high altitudes. These Martian clouds are likely composed of crystals of water ice that condense onto dust grains in the cold Martian atmosphere. Cirrus wisps appear as ice crystals fall and evaporate in patterns known as "fall streaks" or "mare's tails." Such patterns have been seen before at high latitudes on Mars, for instance by the Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008, and seasonally nearer the equator, for instance by the Opportunity rover. However, Curiosity has not previously observed such clouds so clearly visible from the rover's study area about five degrees south of the equator. The Hubble Space Telescope and spacecraft orbiting Mars have observed a band of clouds to appear near the Martian equator around the time of the Martian year when the planet is farthest from the Sun. With a more elliptical orbit than Earth's, Mars experiences more annual variation than Earth in its distance from the Sun. The most distant point in an orbit around the Sun is called the aphelion. The near-equatorial Martian cloud pattern observed at that time of year is called the "aphelion cloud belt." These new images from Curiosity were taken about two months before aphelion, but the morning clouds observed may be an early stage of the aphelion cloud belt. More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/
More from NASA
Dusting off a rock on Mars November 1, 2017 This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows effects of using the rover's wire-bristled Dust Removal Tool (DRT) on a rock target called "Christmas Cove." The tool brushed an area about 2.5 inches (6 centimeters) across on Sept. 16, 2017, during the 1,118th Martian day, or sol of Curiosity's work on Mars. MAHLI took this image later the same sol. Both DRT and MAHLI are on the turret of tools at the end of Curiosity's arm. The site is partway up "Vera Rubin Ridge" on lower Mount Sharp, in an area where reconnaissance imaging with science filters revealed variability in indications of the mineral hematite. Removing dust from part of the Christmas Cove target was part of an experiment to check whether dust is subduing the apparent indications of hematite in some of the area's bedrock. The brushed area's purplish tint in this MAHLI image, accentuated even more when observed with science filters of the rover's Mast Camera, is characteristic of fine-grained hematite. Brushing of this target also exposed details in the fine layering and bright veins within the bedrock of this part of Vera Rubin Ridge. The image is oriented so that sunlight comes from upper left. Layers are lower (older) toward lower right. MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover. More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. Credit Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS #nasa
Clouds Sailing Overhead on Mars, Enhanced August 9, 2017 Wispy clouds float across the Martian sky in this accelerated sequence of enhanced images from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. The rover's Navigation Camera (Navcam) took these eight images over a span of four minutes early in the morning of the mission's 1,758th Martian day, or sol (July 17, 2017), aiming nearly straight overhead. They have been processed by first making a "flat field' adjustment for known differences in sensitivity among pixels and correcting for camera artifacts due to light reflecting within the camera, and then generating an "average" of all the frames and subtracting that average from each frame. This subtraction results in emphasizing any changes due to movement or lighting. The clouds are also visible, though fainter, in a raw image sequence from these same observations. On the same Martian morning, Curiosity also observed clouds near the southern horizon. The clouds resemble Earth's cirrus clouds, which are ice crystals at high altitudes. These Martian clouds are likely composed of crystals of water ice that condense onto dust grains in the cold Martian atmosphere. Cirrus wisps appear as ice crystals fall and evaporate in patterns known as "fall streaks" or "mare's tails." Such patterns have been seen before at high latitudes on Mars, for instance by the Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008, and seasonally nearer the equator, for instance by the Opportunity rover. However, Curiosity has not previously observed such clouds so clearly visible from the rover's study area about five degrees south of the equator. The Hubble Space Telescope and spacecraft orbiting Mars have observed a band of clouds to appear near the Martian equator around the time of the Martian year when the planet is farthest from the Sun. With a more elliptical orbit than Earth's, Mars experiences more annual variation than Earth in its distance from the Sun. The most distant point in an orbit around the Sun is called the aphelion. The near-equatorial Martian cloud pattern observed at that time of year is called the "aphelion cloud belt." These new images from Curiosity were taken about two months before aphelion, but the morning clouds observed may be an early stage of the aphelion cloud belt. More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/
