Deployable Sunshield Design and Development for the James Webb Space Telescope
Abstract
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large aperture (6.5 meter), passively cooled cryogenic space telescope with a suite of near and mid-infrared instruments. Passive cooling of the telescope and near infrared instruments to below 40 Kelvin is enabled by a large, 15 meter by 21 meter, deployable sunshield. In addition to protecting the telescope from the Sun's heat, the sunshield's size and custom shape provide a large field of regard enabling continuous exposures of up to ten days and all sky visibility over the course of a year. The sunshield's five separated thin Kapton membrane layers must be compactly stowed and protected during launch and carefully controlled during several deployment steps. After describing the sunshield's architecture evolution and demanding requirements, we will present an overview of the sunshield's design solution and deployment procedures. Recent design and testing progress using a full-size sunshield test-bed is also presented along with an overview of its predicted on-orbit thermal and stray-light performance.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #213
- Pub Date:
- January 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AAS...21342620P