Winlight grinds the baseplate of the near-infrared spectrometer of the James Webb Space Telescope
On Wednesday, December 22, at 13:20 UTC, Ariane 5 ECA lifted off from the Guiana Space Centre, Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, successfully deploying JWST. A closer look at the world’s largest space telescope and Winlight’s contribution.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a 6.2-tonne satellite developed by NASA in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Comprising four scientific instruments, the near-infrared camera NIRCam, the near-infrared spectrograph NIRSpec, the mid-infrared instrument MIRI, and the near-infrared imager and slitless spectrograph NIRISS, JWST aims to observe stars, galaxies, planets and nebulae to better understand the history of the Universe. Its objectives are:
- Search for the first luminous objects or galaxies formed after the Big Bang.
- Study the birth and evolution of stars and galaxies.
- Understand the formation of exoplanets.
As part of the development of the near-infrared spectrograph, Winlight used its established expertise in optical surface polishing on complex geometries to carry out a delicate operation on the NIRSpec instrument’s baseplate. The silicon carbide baseplate of the multi-object NIRSpec spectrograph was ground by Winlight to obtain a very flat surface without grinding marks. This high-end instrument will provide spectroscopic surveys of very distant and ultra-faint galaxies and many compact sources.
The worthy successor to the Hubble Space Telescope began a 29-day journey to reach its observation position at a Lagrange point, located nearly 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, opposite the Sun.
Such a journey represents a true technical achievement, since the space observatory’s mirrors were designed to deploy in space and position themselves to within fractions of a micron on the 10th and 13th days after liftoff.
Winlight’s teams wished JWST a safe journey and 10 successful years of operation.