Metrologic To Provide Optical System James Webb Space Telescope

TELESCOPES

Blackwood - Dec 08, 2003
Metrologic Instruments, Inc. has been awarded a four-year incrementally funded contract worth a potential of $1 million from Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. to provide an electro-optic alignment subsystem for the James Webb Space Telescope ("JWST").

The James Webb Space Telescope is a next generation successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Because of the increased light collecting power of its larger mirror and the extraordinary sensitivity of its instruments to infrared light, the JWST will be able to look deeper into the universe than the Hubble. The JWST design calls for light to be collected by a unique mosaic of 18 hexagonal mirror segments, each measuring 1.3 meters across.

Metrologic's subsidiary Adaptive Optics Associates (AOA) will be responsible for developing a subsystem that will monitor and align each of these segments so that the entire system acts as one powerful imaging telescope.

AOA's President and General Manager Jeff Yorsz noted, "We are proud to be part of such an important scientific endeavor. While AOA has been providing this type of leading-edge, electro-optic solution for years, the James Webb Space Telescope requires some novel imaging concepts and also provides us with the environmental challenge of space."

The JWST program is led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and consists of an international team involving the European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, industry, and academia. Northrop Grumman is the Prime Contractor leading the design and development effort.

TELESCOPES

Chandra Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer Update

Boston - Nov 13, 2003
As has been noted for "some time", molecular contaminants have been slowly building up on a filter that shields the CCD chips in the Chandra X-ray Observatory's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) from optical and ultraviolet light.