spacetoday.net: NASA selects TRW to build space telescope

Posted: Wed, Sep 11, 2002, 8:16 AM ET (1216 GMT)
James Webb Space Telescope (NASA)

NASA announced early Tuesday that it had selected TRW to build a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will be named after a former NASA administrator. The Next Generation Space Telescope, now known as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will be built by TRW under a $825 million contract awarded Tuesday. The telescope, with a folding mirror six meters across, will be launched in 2010 to the Earth-Sun L2 point, 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth in the direction opposite the Sun. The JWST will carry three infrared instruments designed to carry out studies ranging from the origin and structure of the universe to searches for extrasolar planets. TRW beat out Lockheed Martin for the contract, whose award had been expected since late August.