Northrop Builds Tower Assembly For NASA Webb Telescope

Northrop Grumman has finished building components for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, connecting the spacecraft to the optical telescope element.

The company said its Astro Aerospace business unit designed the deployable tower assembly, a telescoping tower that contains composite components developed by ATK.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. contracted Northrop to design and develop Webb’s sunshield, telescope and spacecraft.

ATK manufactured parts for Webb’s center section and the companies recently announced they completed a section of the component that will hold Webb’s mirrors in place.

The European and Canadian space agencies are partners in the Webb program.

Once fully deployed, the tower is 9.6 feet tall, nearly twice its stowed height of 5.6 feet, and insulates the cold telescope from the rest of the hot spacecraft.

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