This photo, taken from the inside of Chamber A, a giant cryogenic vacuum chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, shows the large vehicle resembling a bed frame in the foreground that will move James Webb Space Telescope’s Pathfinder backplane inside the chamber. The large rounded object on the right side of the photo is the “bed chamber’s” giant door.
The actual pathfinder backplane with three support arms forming a triangle is located at the far wall of the clean room where this photo was taken.
Engineers from NASA and Exelis, Rochester, New York, later rolled the pathfinder onto the “bed” and into the chamber where it will undergo a series of optical and thermal tests. For more information about the Webb telescope, visit www.jwst.nasa.gov or www.nasa.gov/webb.
Image credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
Text credit: Rob Gutro, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland