NASA's Webb Telescope Clean Room 'Transporter'

The first temptation was to write this isn't that geeky but, yep, it is.  I like it because all the alien spacemen make it look like it's a James Bond movie and Dr No is building something to enslave mankind.

What looks like a teleporter from science fiction being draped over NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, is actually a "clean tent." The clean tent protects Webb from dust and dirt when engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland transport the next generation space telescope out of the relatively dust-free cleanroom and into the shirtsleeve environment of the vibration and acoustics testing areas. In two years, a rocket will be the transporter that carries the Webb into space so it can orbit one million miles from Earth and peer back over 13.5 billion years to see the first stars and galaxies forming out of the darkness of the early universe.

For more information about the Webb telescope, visit: www.jwst.nasa.gov or www.nasa.gov/webb.

Photo Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

- NASA:  NASA's Webb Telescope Clean Room 'Transporter'

In effect they're putting a cleanroom inside a cleanroom and maybe that sounds ludicrously cautious but even the tiniest mote of dust on that reflector will appear in whatever the telescope ultimately images.  Some Future Astrophysicist may think, Eureka, I've found the answer to the Big Bang only to be told, nope, that's just dust, mate.