The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reports that experts have successfully folded and packaged the giant heat shield of the orbiting James Webb Space Telescope.

The named apparatus will become the largest and most powerful space telescope in history: the diameter of the composite mirror is 6,5 m. “James Webb” will deal with a variety of tasks, in particular, the study of objects in the solar system, the search for exoplanets and possible traces of life in the Universe.

For the observatory to operate, a heat shield is required to protect the apparatus from the sun’s rays. The temperature of the mirror and devices must be less than minus 220 degrees Celsius for infrared operation.

The screen, which has a special five-layer structure, is comparable in size to a tennis court – 21 × 14 meters. At the same time, when folded, it takes up relatively little space. It took NASA engineers about a month to fold the panel and lay it down.

After deployment in space, the temperature on the solar side of the panel will be up to 110 degrees Celsius, on the opposite side – minus 237 degrees Celsius. In this case, the screen has a small thickness of 0,005 cm for the first layer and 0,0025 cm for the other four.

The launch of the James Webb Observatory is scheduled for this fall.