James Webb Space Telescope Discovery

NASA’s Webb Telescope NIRSpec Instrument Ready for Science

Three of the four science instruments on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have completed their commissioning activities and are ready for science. Each of Webb’s instruments has multiple modes of operation, which need to be tested, calibrated, and ultimately verified before they can begin to conduct science. The latest instrument to complete this process, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph, or NIRSpec, has four key modes the team officially confirmed as ready to go. “We made it: NIRSpec is ready for science! This is an amazing moment, the result of the hard work of so many JWST and NIRSpec people and teams over more than two decades. I am just so proud of everyone,” said Pierre Ferruit, Webb project scientist with ESA (European Space Agency) and principal investigator for NIRSpec. “Now is time for science, and I am eager to see the first scientific results coming from NIRSpec observations. I have no doubt they will be fantastic. Big thanks to all who made this possible across the years – great job!” Image: This commissioning test image is a subset of a NIRSpec multi-object spectroscopy exposure of a region close to the center of our Milky Way galaxy. NIRSpec’s two detectors and its microshutter arrays were used to pack more than 200 spectra in a single exposure. Each horizontal stripe is a spectrum that scientists will be able to analyze to better understand the composition and properties of the gas found between the stars in this region – for example, through the study of emission lines that show up at small, brighter, slightly tilted vertical lines in these spectra. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA and the NIRSpec team Tags: test image engineering image