New Approach to Cryogenic Optical Testing the James Webb Space Telescope

摘要

The James Webb Space Telescope is a 6.5 meter segmented cryogenic telescope scheduled to be launched in 2013. A key development challenge has been the cost and complexity of cryogenic optical testing of the telescope and observatory. A new approach to cryogenic optical testing the telescope and observatory has been developed that eliminates the need for a complex and expensive cryogenic optical test tower and which also allows all critical test equipment to be external to the chamber and accessible during testing. This paper summarizes the motivation for this change, the conceptual design of it, and status of implementing it.