The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in October, 2018, is currently sitting in the world’s largest clean room at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This past week, the team working on the telescope lifted and turned it for the first time.
Next step: installing the telescope’s science instruments to the back of the mirrors!
Notice the telescope’s gold mirror surfaces. It doesn’t just look gold; it is a real gold coating on the beryllium mirrors. NASA says the large primary and rounded secondary mirror on this telescope are specially designed to reflect infrared light.
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