ESA Awards EADS Astrium Contract to Build NIRSpec Super-eye for James Webb Space Telescope

EADS Astrium GmbH will build the NIRSpec super-eye for the James Webb Space Telescope (ESA photo)

Friedrichshafen/Ottobrunn, August 9/Satnews Daily/ — The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded a €69million contract to EADS Astrium GmbH to build the NIRSpec super-eye for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to Hubble (launched in 1990), which is currently operational in space, providing spectacular results and images from the earliest phases of our universe. EADS Astrium’s predecessor companies supplied Hubble’s Faint Object Camera (FOC), which operated perfectly on board Hubble until 1997 – the only remaining first-generation instrument.

EADS Astrium Space’s satellite specialists will develop and build the instrument at its Friedrichshafen and Ottobrunn facilities and is to complete the instrument, in a flight-ready configuration, by spring 2009. The launch of the JWST telescope is scheduled for mid-2011 on board an Ariane 5 launcher.

The 200kg spectrograph will have the capability to detect the faintest radiation from the most distant galaxies and can observe more than 100 objects simultaneously. In order to do this, the instrument must be able to operate at a temperature of -238°C.

The "final" size of the new universal telescope, covering the visible to mid-infrared range, greatly exceeds the loading dimensions of all existing launchers. The telescope with its 6.6 metre, three-segment primary mirror and a tennis-court-sized sunshield will therefore only be deployed in orbit.

In order to examine the history of the origins of our universe, JWST is equipped with three instruments: a Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCAM) developed by NASA; a Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) – a collaborative project between U.S. and European institutes with project management support provided by EADS Astrium Ltd. in Stevenage (U.K.); and the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec).

JWST is a collaborative project being carried out by the U.S., Canadian and European space agencies.

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