"Engineering Challenges -- The James Webb Space Telescope"
How do you fit a telescope the size of a tennis court into a rocket as wide as a pickup truck? The people at NASA have come up with a solution -- to fold it!
The James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched in 2013, is NASA’s next orbiting telescope.
Webb, like the Spitzer Space Telescope, will view the universe in wavelengths that cannot be seen by the human eye. Webb will observe infrared light. Objects that are not quite hot enough to glow with visible light glow with infrared light. Infrared light also pierces layers of dust that can hide objects in space, allowing Webb to see objects that normally would be blocked from view.
High school students, working as design teams, solve REAL problems facing current NASA researchers. Face-to-face, in the RealWorld, students learn what it takes to brainstorm, design, build, test and share workable solutions.