Jay Clemens
Lockheed Martin and the University of Arizona have delivered an infrared camera to NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center, where that technology will be installed on the James Webb Space Telescope.
The near infrared camera joins three other instruments at the Goddard center and that camera is intended to serve as JWST’s central imaging system, Lockheed said Monday.
Jeff Vanden Beukel, Lockheed NIRCam program director, said the NIRCam and other instruments are set to undergo tests meant to demonstrate how the components function as a unit.
NIRCam was developed and tested at a Lockheed facility in Palo Alto, Calif. and Marcia Rieke, a Regents’ professor at the UA department of astronomy and steward observatory, served as principal investigator for the project.
Lockheed provided NASA the optical, mechanical, structural, thermal and electronic precision technologies and the NIRCam control software while Teledyne Imaging Systems built the infrared detector arrays.
Astronomers will use the camera system to explore deep space via the JWST, Lockheed says.
