JWST news by John Hutchings and Rene Doyon

In May this year, NASA announced a delay of 1 year in the launch date, from June 2013 to June 2014.  This was anticipated, as delays have accumulated in delivery of essential electronic components, and scheduled testing time, to where the mandatory contingency time no longer covered them.  The total cost impact is almost all in the extra year of keeping the team working. On the Canadian side, our instrument delivery times are not changed, and we are keeping to our schedule, while dealing with the usual problems and worries that occur in space instrumentation. All the instruments are now past critical design review and are producing actual hardware. The overall performance of the telescope still looks as-designed, but receives constant attention from the Science Working Group.  One positive result of the delay is that there is an extra year to prepare for operations. In response to the time and budget squeeze on operations support at STScI, we have recruited two extra Canadian scientists to Baltimore to support our instrument.  The Canadian team of four now consists of Alex Fullerton and Pierre Chayer, who have been in place for a couple of years, joined this April by Kevin Volk and Andre Martel. The project-wide bi-annual Partners Workshop was hosted by CSA in May, at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa, and welcomed by CSA president Steve Maclean.  At this occasion, CSA unveiled the official logo for the project, which is at the top of this report.

   The pictures show our FGS engineering model instrument which has been in test in the cryogenic vacuum facility of CSA’s David Florida Lab in Ottawa. Flight detectors, optics, filters, and etalon are in various stages of fabrication and test. The other JWST instruments are in similar stages, and the telescope beryllium primary mirror segments are all in process, with the first few closing in on specified performance as they enter the final touch-up polishing.  The all-essential sunshade and deployment are in final design, with extensive testing planned on a 1/3 model now under construction.