Ramona Adams
Raytheon has conducted factory acceptance tests on a flight operations system for NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope.
The tests occurred at Raytheon’s Aurora, Colorado-based facility and aimed to verify 800 requirements on JWST’s ground control system, the company said Wednesday.
Raytheon built the space observatory’s ground control system on the campus of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, under a contract with the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Matt Gilligan, vice president of Raytheon’s navigation and environmental solutions business, said the ground control system is designed to download data from space and support the telescope’s flight.
NASA aims to launch JWST sometime in 2018 to replace Hubble Space Telescope and observe galaxies and planetary systems through a planned five-year mission.
