NASA’s Amazing Space Telescope Will Peer 13.5 Billion Years Into the Past
After nearly a quarter-century and several delays, the $9.6 billion James Webb Space Telescope is in the home stretch for a 2021 launch
By Susan Karlin
It’s a sight out of a science-fiction novel — a soaring tower of hexagonal gold mirrors atop a massive five-layered silver sunshield and a circular spacecraft bus. Polished to within nanometers of accuracy, the mirrors front a quartet of complex instruments sensitive enough to decipher alien atmospheres and peer back to the dawn of time.
Since the last of the completed components arrived from NASA bases around the country last August, the 14,000-lb. James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has come together in a cavernous clean room at Northrop Grumman Space Park in Redondo Beach, California. From the vantage of the observation deck, the only indication of its four-story height are miniature engineers clad in white jumpsuits scurrying about its base. This is the first time that press — invited late last month for a briefing on the mission’s next steps — have seen the fully assembled observatory.
“Over the last few years, we were working in two halves. Until the summer of last year, they were in a very long…
