On April 7, 2022, one of its instruments, the Webb Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reached a temperature of minus 266 degrees Celsius (below 7 kelvins or minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit).
The Webb Central Infrared Instrument (MIRI), initially cooled under a windshield the size of a Webb tennis court, dropped to minus 183 degrees Celsius (about 90 kelvins or minus 298 F). Because MIRI detectors are different, they must be at a temperature less than 7 kelvins (minus 266 degrees Celsius) to operate properly.
Read also; The James Webb Telescope Sun Shield Opens, Here’s What It Looks Like
These temperatures would not have been possible without a dedicated “cryocooler” to cool the MIRI detector. Once MIRI reached a frigid 6.4 kelvin, scientists began a series of checks to make sure the detector was operating as expected.
“The team is very excited and nervous about entering critical activity. Ultimately, it was a textbook procedure execution, and the cooler performance was even better than expected,” said Analyn Schneider, project manager for MIRI at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. /2022).
Webb’s instruments are contained within the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM), the core of the James Webb Space Telescope. It houses four main instruments: Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, Near-Infrared Spectrograph, or NIRSpec, Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI and Fine Guidance Sensor/ Near InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, or FGS/NIRISS.
Read also; Skip 178 Complex Mechanical Processes, James Webb Telescope’s Giant Mirror Opens Perfectly
All instruments detect infrared light, therefore it must be at a low temperature. Cooling the four instrument detectors and the surrounding hardware suppresses those infrared emissions.
MIRI detects longer infrared wavelengths than the other three instruments, meaning it has to be even cooler. “When the test data came in, I was thrilled to see it looked exactly as expected and we had a sound instrument,” said Mike Ressler, project scientist for MIRI at JPL.
(Web)
–
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elfinanciero/3L5Z2VMMVRFRZCBASL24YSYALE.jpeg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 "Apple Music announces price increase for subscribers – El Financiero")