The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb)—the largest space observatory ever built—were livestreamed Tuesday, July 12 on NASA Live. The product of decades of development and testing, Webb carries contributions from a generation of University of Maryland engineering alumni.
Webb’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), a breakthrough instrument developed at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, is designed to observe up to 100 space objects simultaneously. Two Maryland Engineering alumni—Wen-Hsien Chuang and Dan Kelly—played important roles in inventing and building the micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) microshutter array that controls how light enters NIRSpec. Alum Kan Yang also played a key role in determining whether Webb’s instruments would work in the extreme cold of space.