Irish help develop successor to Hubble telescope

IT IS a telescope that will peer back to the beginning of time. It is so sensitive it could spot a candle on one of Jupiter’s moons. And Irish scientists have played a major part in its design and development.

Yesterday saw the handover of the first instrument that will fly on board the James Webb Space Telescope, the replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope. Due for launch in 2018, the Webb will be a telescope like no other, with the ability to see out into space far beyond the range of the highly successful Hubble.

Ireland is a major contributor to this project through the development of the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). Prof Tom Ray of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies is a co-principal investigator for this instrument, with the backing of Enterprise Ireland. He and his team at the institute’s astronomy and astrophysics section built infrared beam splitters and filters that will help the instrument see distant galaxies and watch planets form.

Currently, institute staff are developing the software needed to analyse data being picked up by the instrument.

The British science minister, David Willetts and officials from the European Space Agency (Esa) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration attended the handover in London. Prof Ray delivered a talk at the event.

The infrared instrument is the first of four main instruments to be handed over to Nasa for shipment to the US and integration into the space telescope at the Goddard Space Centre in Maryland. Its completion comes after 10 long years of design, testing and building, with Prof Ray and the institute involved from the very beginning.

“It arose because in the past we were involved in other satellite missions including gamma ray and infrared observatories with Esa,” he said. “It kind of naturally arose out of that.”

The institute team are working in collaboration with the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Up to 200 engineers have contributed to the development of the instrument over the past decade, Prof Ray said.

Once the instrument reaches Goddard, it will be installed and tested over two years. As other instruments are completed, they too will be built into the telescope. It would take six more years before that process was completed, Prof Ray said.

The Webb will be sent into an orbit four times farther away from the Earth than the Moon. At present, there is nothing like it in the world, given its sensitivity and ability to see so much farther into the universe.

Prof Ray said the telescope would “help us see the first stars and galaxies after the Big Bang and peer into new solar systems as they form”.

“It is wonderful to be part of the team that has helped achieve this major milestone for the [Webb] project.”