Mar. 29, 2016

A new video from NASA shows the James Webb Space Telescope's cameras and spectrographs being lifted out of the Space Environment Simulator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. These vital parts of the telescope endured their last super-cold test here.
The Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM, holds all of the Webb telescope’s cameras and spectrographs. The module is wrapped in special blanketing to keep everything spotlessly clean.

For months, these components were tested inside the Space Environment Simulator. This simulator is a cylindrical chamber 40 feet tall and 27 feet wide. Vacuum pumps eliminate the air within; and liquid nitrogen and even colder gaseous helium drop the temperature to simulate the conditions in space where the Webb telescope will orbit. The testing is critical because these instruments must operate at incredibly cold temperatures around minus 387 F, or 40 kelvins. This is 260 F colder than any temperature ever recorded on Earth’s surface.
After the test the components were moved inside Goddard's massive clean room. The instruments will next be integrated onto the observatory to join the telescope's mirrors.

The science instrument modules tested consist of the mid-infrared instrument (MIRI), jointly developed by a nationally funded European Consortium under the auspices of ESA (the European Space Agency) and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; a near infrared spectrometer (NIRSpec), jointly developed by Airbus for ESA and the U.S.; the Fine Guidance Sensor and Near-InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, provided by the Canadian Space Agency and developed by COM DEV International, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada; and Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), built by a team at the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center.

Image: This rare overhead view of the thermal vacuum chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, shows the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) when it was lowered into the chamber to begin its final cryogenic test at Goddard. The test was recently completed successfully.