On the 9th of April the James Webb Space Telescope’s heart was installed at NASA’S Goddard Space flight centre.
Situated in Greenbelt, Maryland, the site is home to the world’s largest cleanroom.
The installation required an amazing precision ‘wiggle’ because the core piece of the telescope had to “avoid interference with already installed systems”.
Maurice de Plate, of the European Space Agency said that the cleanroom operators had to be careful not to “crash into” [disturb the air around] the space.
The other materials are incredibly brittle, and any damage could cause massive project set-backs.
At the beginning of February NASA released a video of sped-up footage showing engineers working in the cleanroom.
In the 32 second video technicians integrate the Fine Guidance Sensor instrument into the Integrated Science Instrument Module.
It’s fascinating to see a cleanroom of this scale in action.
View the footage here.
