NASA is developing the companion of its famous Space Telescope, Hubble.
The new space telescope has been named after NASA’s Second top administrator James Webb who left NASA a year before the first successful landing on the moon. The James Webb Space telescope is scheduled for a launch in 2013 and will orbit earth at 940,000 miles that is four times the distance between moon and earth.
NASA’s earlier similar launch of the Hubble Space Telescope was successful but later the agency found out that the mirrors in the telescope were ground to wrong specifications and then it has to send a shuttle mission to replace the lenses.
The agency is now worried about the performance of the Webb Space Telescope as a field surface to this would prove to be more expensive than the field mission that was provided to Hubble.
Different international agencies are working on the Telescope Guidance, Navigation and control systems. To ensure better quality NASA is telling each of the participants to develop the software using Unified Modeling Language that will allow the code to be generated from models. NASA has also told the participants to use as many interfaces and software standards as possible.
NASA also requires that the system platform should be reliable so that it does not require any services throughout its extensive service time.
The James Webb telescope will be having more instruments to measure infrared light rather than visible light. This should enable telescope to peer further in time than Hubble was able to.
Image Credit: NASA
Via: eetimes
