《美国空间6.5米望远镜在NASA休斯顿空间中心进行最后三个月低温试验》

  • 来源专题:天文仪器与技术信息
  • 编译者: zwg@niaot.ac.cn
  • 发布时间:2017-06-29
  • NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was placed in Johnson Space Center’s historic Chamber A on June 20, 2017, to prepare for its final three months of testing in a cryogenic vacuum that mimics temperatures in space.

    Engineers will perform the test to prove that the telescope can operate in space at these temperatures. Chamber A will simulate an environment where the telescope will experience extreme cold -- around 37 Kelvin (minus 236 degrees Celsius or minus 393 degrees Fahrenheit).

    In space, the telescope must be kept extremely cold, in order to be able to detect the infrared light from very faint, distant objects. To protect the telescope from external sources of light and heat (like the sun, Earth, and moon), as well as from heat emitted by the observatory, a five-layer, tennis court-sized sunshield acts like a parasol that provides shade. The sunshield separates the observatory into a warm, sun-facing side (reaching temperatures close to 185 degrees Fahrenheit) and a cold side (400 degrees below zero). The sunshield blocks sunlight from interfering with the sensitive telescope instruments.

    The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

  • 原文来源:https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasas-webb-telescope-gets-freezing-summertime-lodging-in-houston
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  • 《美国空间6.5米望远镜到达NASA休斯顿空间中心》

    • 来源专题:天文仪器与技术信息
    • 编译者:zwg@niaot.ac.cn
    • 发布时间:2017-05-12
    • NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where it will undergo its last cryogenic test before it is launched into space in 2018. The telescope was loaded onto a trailer truck from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and moved slowly down a highway by the Webb team to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. At Andrews, the entire tractor-trailer, with telescope inside, was driven into a U.S. Air Force C-5C aircraft and flown to Ellington Field in Houston, Texas. When the C-5 landed at Ellington, the cargo was carefully unloaded and trucked to NASA Johnson, where inside a cleanroom the telescope was removed from its special shipping container. In the coming weeks it will be prepared for a key cryogenic test that will run nearly 100 days. To ensure the telescope's optics will operate at its frigid destination 1 million miles out in space, it must complete tests at cryogenic temperatures in a vacuum. The biggest and final cryogenic-vacuum test occurs in Johnson's Chamber A, the same vacuum chamber where Apollo spacecraft were tested. This test is critical in that it will verify the performance of the whole telescope as a system end-to-end at its extremely cold operating temperatures. Subsequently, the telescope will continue on its journey to Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California, for final assembly and testing with the spacecraft bus and sunshield prior to launch in 2018. The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s most advanced space observatory. This engineering marvel is designed to unravel some of the greatest mysteries of the universe, from discovering the first stars and galaxies that formed after the big bang to studying the atmospheres of planets around other stars. It is a joint project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency. The James Webb Space Telescope is pushed into the clean room of Building 32. Building 32 houses Chamber A, the thermal vacuum chamber where the telescope will have its final thermal vacuum testing.
  • 《美国NASA对空间6.5米望远镜(JWST)进行新的振动试验》

    • 来源专题:天文仪器与技术信息
    • 编译者:zwg@niaot.ac.cn
    • 发布时间:2017-02-23
    • Scientists and engineers had many challenges in designing the components of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and then had to custom design and build ways to test it. Because of the sheer size and scale of the assembled Webb telescope, some of the equipment typically used to test spacecraft simply doesn’t measure up. One of those is a "shaker table" that is used to shake satellites to ensure a spacecraft like Webb can withstand the shaking that comes with a ride into space on a rocket. So, engineers at Team Corporation in Burlington, Washington built a new, large and advanced shaker table system at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, especially for testing Webb. "The new “Vibration Test Systems” simulates the forces the telescope will feel during the launch by vibrating it from 5 to 100 times per second" said Jon Lawrence, Webb telescope mechanical systems lead and launch vehicle liaison at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. For Webb, the need for a new shaker system was a combination of things, including shaker force magnitude, the shaker table’s ability to handle the telescope’s highly offset center of gravity, and the need for a precision “smart” shaker control system—one that will automatically adjust shaker input levels based on test article responses, including an automatic ‘soft shutdown’ capability. "No matter what facility anomaly might be experienced during testing (loss of power, loss of coolant, etc.), the Vibration Test System or VTS is designed to shut down 'softly' so as to avoid imparting potentially damaging loads," Lawrence said. After vibration testing of the telescope is completed soon, the new VTS can be used to test other future large spacecraft. To make sure it works properly before using it to test the flight telescope, engineers put the new shaker system though its paces with many practice runs over months, using a dummy mass to represent the telescope. In November, Webb was moved from the Spacecraft Systems Development and Integration Facility ‘cleanroom’ and onto the new neighboring Vibration Test System (VTS), where testing is ongoing. While in the shirtsleeve environment of the VTS, a large 3-story tall cover enshrouds the telescope, acting as a portable ‘cleanroom’ that protects it from dust and dirt. This spring, after vibration testing is complete, the Webb telescope will be shipped to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for end-to-end optical tests in a vacuum at extremely cold temperatures, before it goes to Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California, for final assembly and testing prior to launch.