Harnessing space

The Space Science and Technology Department (SSTD) of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has been awarded a £800,000 contract to carry out environmental testing on a cryogenic harness for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The contract was awarded by the Staffordshire-based  Tekdata Interconnect Systems, which is manufacturing the harness for Northrop Grumman, the company developing the JWST.

The JWST will succeed the Hubble Space Telescope and carry a mirror seven times larger for greater light-collecting sensitivity. The telescope is a massive international collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

To gather new data describing the origins of light, galaxies, stars and life, the telescope will carry a number of imaging and spectrographic instruments, including a Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and a Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec).

The instruments are cryogenically cooled to temperatures as low as 100 milliKelvin, and require superconducting wire interconnects to prevent thermal interference due to heat leak. To achieve the utmost accuracy in the near infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths, from 0.6µm to 5µm and 5µm to 27µm respectively, Tekdata is working with the European and US institutes to build flight cables for the NIRSpec and the test harness for the MIRI.