The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), presently tracking toward a launch no earlier than December 22 on an Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Centre in South America, will revolutionize in-space astronomy, particularly with its Mid-InfraRed Instrument, or MIRI.
The instrument itself requires special cooling to drop its temperature to just 6 Kelvin — a cooling system that cannot be fully tested on Earth before launch. To discuss this and other elements of the MIRI component of JWST, NASASpaceflight spoke with the NASA Project Scientist for MIRI, Dr. Michael Ressler.