James Webb Space Telescope mirror seen in full bloom
Date: 13 April 2017
Satellite: JWST
Location: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Copyright: NASA/Desiree Stover
It's springtime and the deployed primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope looks like a spring flower in full bloom.
In this photo, NASA technicians lifted the telescope using a crane and moved it inside a clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Once launched into space, the JWST telescope's 18-segmented gold mirror is specially designed to capture infrared light from the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, and will help the telescope peer inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. JWST is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency.
(Originally published here.)
