NASA closes Chamber A door to commence Webb telescope testing

Though the Webb telescope will be enveloped in darkness, the engineers testing the telescope will be far from blind. “There are many thermal sensors that monitor temperatures of the telescope and the support equipment,” said Gary Matthews, an integration and testing engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who is testing the Webb telescope while it is at Johnson. “Specialized camera systems track the physical position of the hardware inside the chamber, monitoring how Webb moves as it gets colder.”