Here at the Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt Maryland, we are building the most advanced
and largest space telescope ever constructed
the James Webb Space Telescope. With the big game right around the
corner, we thought, it'd be pretty cool to use a football to demonstrate
some of the testing we do here at Goddard to make sure that Webb is ready for
its mission. Launch is the most intense part
of any spacecraft's mission and we need to make sure Webb can survive
its ride on the very powerful Ariane V rocket.
Ben Lovera, 2016 Maryland High School Field
Goal leader will help us demonstrate.
Ben's kick imparts a force on the football
of slightly more than four Gs.
One G is the force you feel standing on Earth.
During launch, Webb telescope components can experience
forces up to 19 Gs or 19
times their weight. Imagine your legs holding up 19 times your
body weight - for humans, that's physically impossible.
Webb's composite structure and components
are built and tested to handle that. We put the Telescope, and
all of its components, through a series of tests to prove
that it can withstand the rigors of launch. These tests include:
vibration tests
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centrifuge tests
and acoustic tests. We use this giant acoustic chamber
and its very powerful sound system to mimic the sound pressure and
frequencies we see on the Ariane V rocket during launch.
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Sound pressure waves can cause vibrations
which may be very damaging. We test in this chamber
to make sure the rocket noise won't break anything.
We test every material used to build Webb
to make sure it can withstand the stresses of launch and properly function
in space.
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Webb's instruments are designed to detect infrared
light from the farthest objects in the Universe. Our eyes can't detect infrared
light, but we can feel it as heat. Here's the heat where my hand
warmed up this football and left a heat print on it.
To perform it's mission, Webb's instruments need to be
extremely cold - very near absolute zero
or minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit.
We don't want their own heat influencing the images so we test
everything cryogenically in large test chambers.
And make sure everything works as it should in the freezing environment of space.
Materials can change dramatically
at these cryogenic temperatures. Not always how you'd expect.
Let's see what happens to this football in Liquid Nitrogen, which is still
about 70 to 100 degree warmer than some of Webb's instruments.
The ball's inner rubber bladder shattered
at this temperature but, wow, the outer shell holds
together! Webb’s instruments on the other hand are built to
withstand such extreme temperatures. Not the sledgehammer
by the way! Test, test and test
again is the key. We’d rather have something break during
a test on the ground where we can understand the problem and fix it, than
in space. Soon the Telescope will be heading to Johnson Space Center
in Houston Texas for some more testing before it heads to
to Northrop Grumman in California to be assembled and packed into a rocket.
The Telescope will be launched from French Guiana in 2018.
This football may not be space worthy, but
it sure works well here on Earth! Check out
nasa.gov/jwst to learn more about this
incredible mission that is the follow-on to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Beeps