The sunshield of the James Webb Space Telescope is made up of five layers of a specially designed material that includes Kapton, aluminum, and silicon. But it’s not only what it’s made of that allows the sunshield to keep the observatory the right temperature to make its observations. Behind the Webb host Mary Estacion takes us to Huntsville, Alabama, to see how engineers are testing each layer of the sunshield.
“Behind the Webb” is an ongoing series that follows the construction of the Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s successor. Find more episodes at Hubblesite.org.
“Behind the Webb” archive:
http://webbtelescope.org/webb_telescope/behind_the_webb/archive/