Telescope May Bring View of Early Universe
Posted on: Friday, 26 August 2005, 07:27 CDT
ELMORE, Ohio (AP) -- Designing and constructing a telescope that can capture faint particles of light from the early periods of the universe has its share of obstacles. One challenge was to design lightweight mirrors durable enough to withstand extreme cold.
The lead contractor building the mirrors on NASA's Webb Space Telescope, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., asked Cleveland-based Brush Wellman Inc. to make the mirror panels, using berylium.
Beryllium, a strong, lightweight metal, is used in military weapons, golf clubs, auto parts and in the cellular industry. Brush Wellman makes the metal at the company's Elmore plant near Toledo.
It has taken about 80 Brush Wellman workers two years to make the 18 hexagon mirrors the size of a card table.
The last of the panels were shipped out last week. The panels will be ground and polished and coated with a reflective layer of gold.
The telescope is set for launch in 2011 and could give scientists an unprecedented view of the early universe.
"We're looking back to the first objects that formed after the Big Bang," said John Mather, Webb's senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "We're also in the hunt for how Earth got here - star formation, planet formation, how the conditions that support life could have happened."
NASA chose beryllium over glass, which is what the Hubble telescope's mirror is made of, because the metal is stiff and dampens vibration so that the view is stable.
Webb's 21-foot-wide mirror is six times the area of Hubble's and weighs about one-third of Hubble's 2,200 pounds.
Hubble has been providing views of distant stars and galaxies since it went into orbit in 1990. But it can't spot the oldest, farthest-away celestial bodies.
The Webb telescope's detectors are far more advanced and should be able to capture infrared waves.
Its builders know they have to get everything right the first time because it will be too far from Earth to reach if any repairs are needed.
"It was obvious we had to do everything well," said Keith Smith, manager of Brush Wellman's Elmore plant.
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