NASA's
James Webb Space Telescope is getting a broadband upgrade with "SpaceWire"
that will allow the new orbital observatory to capture images of the universe in
unprecedented detail once it launches in 2013.
Engineers
at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, took SpaceWire,
originally developed by the European Space Agency, and adapted it for easier
implementation on space missions. They designed a small, low power microchip
that can send SpaceWire signals at speeds over 200 megabits per second, or over
ten times faster than most high definition television broadcasts.
The boost
in speed makes information processing faster among the James Webb Space
Telescope's (JWST) four science instruments as they "talk" to each
other with the SpaceWire network. That means the infrared telescope, NASA's next great
observatory, should capture larger and higher resolution images of space.
"It
makes the scientists happy, and makes the observatory more efficient because it
can cover a large swath of sky faster," said Pam Sullivan, manager of the
JWST Integrated Science Instrument Module. She called $4.5-billion JWST
"the next
generation space telescope" and "successor to Hubble" that will look back 13
billion years to understand the origins of the universe.
JWST acts
"like a digital camera" that turns light into digital data, according
to Sullivan. The telescope will make use of 66 million detector pixels – the
most on any infrared space telescope – that each collects a small bit of
information. The science instruments can then process the information through SpaceWire
to make a complete image, like creating an overall Impressionist painting from
many tiny dots or pixels
"The
trend is for telescopes to have more and more detector pixels to take bigger
pictures of sky," observed Sullivan. She added that SpaceWire enables
larger telescopes because "more pixels generate more data, and you have to
have way to move more data around."
Future missions
can use SpaceWire technology as a standard high-speed electronics package,
rather than having to custom-build each time. After Goddard developed its
version of SpaceWire for the JWST, the improved technology became available for
other NASA missions such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the
Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R.
Nearly
every major U.S. aerospace company, such as Northrop
Grumman and Lockheed, has received Goddard's version of SpaceWire for
government projects, and will soon be able to use the technology in commercial
applications. NASA centers that currently use SpaceWire in technology
development include the NASA Glenn Research Center, in Cleveland, OH, the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA.,
and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL.
For now, the
James Webb Space Telescope represents the next step for NASA – and its
collaborators from the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency – to
take advantage of SpaceWire. Because of the exceptionally large number of
detector pixels, the collecting area of the telescope exceeds the width of the
rocket carrying it into space in 2013. The telescope will be folded up during
launch and fully deployed to its 21-foot (6.5-meter) width once in orbit, an
extra step well worth the effort for NASA managers.
"To
see all the way to the edge of the universe, you
need larger telescopes," said Sullivan.
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