First instrument for new space telescope JWST handed over to Nasa

Scientists of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy in Heidelberg developed components for the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope

After more than ten years of work by more than 200 scientists and engineers, the MIRI instrument, which will fly on the James Webb Space Telescope (successor to the Hubble Space Telescope) is ready to be shipped to Nasa. MIRI, a pioneering camera and spectrograph, is so sensitive it could see a candle on one of Jupiter's moons. Key components of MIRI have been designed and built at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg.

Background information

Further information on the James Webb Space Telescope can be found on the ESA website. The MIRI consortium consists of ESA member states Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. JWST is a joint project of Nasa, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency. It is scheduled to launch in 2018 and will carry four scientific instruments: MIRI (mid-infrared camera and spectrograph), NIRSPEC (near-infrared spectrograph), NIRCam (near-infrared camera), and TFI (tunable filter imager). The work in Europe is funded by National Agencies including the Max Planck Society (MPG) and Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) and ESA. German institutions that took part in the work are the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, the University of Cologne, and Carl Zeiss Optronics.