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M. A. Greenhouse, L. A. Boyce, S. D. Glazer, E. L. Johnson, J. C. McCloskey, P. C. Sullivan, M. F. Voyton (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)
In this poster, we describe the major design features of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM).
The JWST mission is under development by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian Space Agencies for launch during 2013. The JWST is designed to enable a five year science mission that is focused on four themes: [1] observation of the first luminous objects after the Big Bang, [2] the assembly of these objects into galaxies, [3] the birth of stars and planetary systems, and [4] the formation of planets and the origins of life.
The above science themes require high sensitivity and HST-like angular resolution over the near- to mid-infrared spectrum. A ~40 K cryogenic radiatively cooled telescope with a 25 m2 collecting area was selected to meet these requirments. A mission architecture involving a Lissajous orbit about the Earth-Sun L2 point was chosen to meet optical stability and data downlink requirments. A modular flight segment architecture was selected to enable incremental integration and test of the cryogenic payload. The ISIM is one key feature of this modular architecture that enables a feasible cryogenic test program.
The ISIM element is the science instrument payload of the observatory. It contains ~70 million infrared detector pixels allocated among four science instrument systems and a fine guidance sensor system. Brief instrument descriptions are available at: www.stsci.edu/jwst/docs/flyers. The ISIM also contains a passive ~40 K thermal control system, a ~6 K cryo-cooler system, a command and data handling system, a flight software system, and an optical metering structure system. The ISIM element is responsible for acquisition of the JWST science data, fine guidance data for telescope pointing control, and wavefront sensing data for in-flight adjustment of the telescope optics. Further information about the JWST mission is available at: www.jwst.nasa.gov.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.