JWST represents an enormous leap forward in technology, international collaboration, and the quest to understand the great cosmic expanse. Thirty years in the making, the $10 billion mission’s innovators and participants include 14 countries, the space agencies of the United States, Canada, and Europe, thousands of engineers, and hundreds of scientists, along with 300 universities, organizations, and leading technology companies, including Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI).

During the telescope’s first year of operation, approximately 6000 hours are allocated for General Observer (GO) programs proposed by scientists—a third of which are women from 40 different nations across the globe.

On December 25, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched into space aboard an ESA Ariane 5 rocket. During the observatory’s one-month journey to its L2 orbital destination, the five membrane layered sunshield unfolded using an elaborate system of motors, pulleys, and cables. Later, the telescope’s secondary mirror extended, followed by the unfolding of the primary’s 18 segmented hexagonal mirrors.

The alignment of the mirrors began once the craft cooled down to an operating temperature of less than –380° Fahrenheit (40 kelvins). In the final months of commissioning, the telescope pointed at representative science targets to test, characterize, and calibrate all four scientific instruments, followed by routine science operations.

Parked on the far side of the Sun and Earth, JWST orbits in a position known as L2—the second Lagrange point—where gravitational forces and the orbital motion of a body balance one another, reducing the amount of fuel needed for a spacecraft to remain in orbit. At L2, the Sun is mostly eclipsed by the Earth’s shadow, with only a corona showing.

Breakthrough advances, innovations, and inventions were needed across precision, power management, and sensor technology to ensure the James Webb Space Telescope's success.

The James Webb Space Telescope acts as a high tech extension of human vision, delivering never-before-seen images of the universe. Now, a new technology, first developed to help construct the advanced space telescope, is employed by eye doctors back here on Earth.

The groundbreaking process, designed for precisely and rapidly measuring JWST’s mirrors after grinding them, was fine-tuned and applied to the world of eye surgery. Developed by Johnson & Johnson, iDESIGN is used to create a high definition map of a patient’s eye to help guide a surgeon performing LASIK corrective eye surgery. Compared to previous eye-mapping technology, iDESIGN provides surgeons with five times more data points while mapping eye aberrations and irregularities. High definition mapping results in more accurate measurements, resulting in more accurate treatment, improved surgical precision, and better quality of vision and life after laser vision correction.

Improving human vision is just one of many space spinoffs derived from the technology developed for the Webb Observatory. Rad-hardened components, initially designed for space, are also used for medical purposes like radiation therapy for treating cancer. Another spinoff is used in supporting non-carbon-based energy sources, like nuclear power. Chris Chipman said, “They are also used in applications using high energy particles, like in CERN’s linear accelerators, where they recently found evidence of Higgs Boson—the ‘God’ particle.”