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Here at the Goddard Space Flight 

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Center in Greenbelt Maryland, we are building the most advanced

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and largest space telescope ever constructed 

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the James Webb Space Telescope. With the big game right around the 

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corner, we thought, it'd be pretty cool to use a football to demonstrate 

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some of the testing we do here at Goddard to make sure that Webb is ready for 

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its mission. Launch is the most intense part 

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of any spacecraft's mission and we need to make sure Webb can survive 

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its ride on the very powerful Ariane V rocket. 

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Ben Lovera, 2016 Maryland High School Field 

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Goal leader will help us demonstrate. 

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Ben's kick imparts a force on the football

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of slightly more than four Gs. 

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One G is the force you feel standing on Earth. 

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During launch, Webb telescope components can experience 

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forces up to 19 Gs or 19

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 times their weight. Imagine your legs holding up 19 times your 

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body weight - for humans, that's physically impossible. 

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Webb's composite structure and components

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are built and tested to handle that. We put the Telescope, and

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all of its components, through a series of tests to prove 

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that it can withstand the rigors of launch. These tests include: 

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vibration tests

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music

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centrifuge tests

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and acoustic tests. We use this giant acoustic chamber

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and its very powerful sound system to mimic the sound pressure and

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frequencies we see on the Ariane V rocket during launch. 

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music

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music

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Sound pressure waves can cause vibrations

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which may be very damaging. We test in this chamber

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to make sure the rocket noise won't break anything.

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We test every material used to build Webb 

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to make sure it can withstand the stresses of launch and properly function 

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in space.

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music

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Webb's instruments are designed to detect infrared 

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light from the farthest objects in the Universe. Our eyes can't detect infrared 

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light, but we can feel it as heat. Here's the heat where my hand 

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warmed up this football and left a heat print on it.

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To perform it's mission, Webb's instruments need to be

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extremely cold - very near absolute zero 

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or minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit. 

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We don't want their own heat influencing the images so we test

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everything cryogenically in large test chambers. 

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And make sure everything works as it should in the freezing environment of space. 

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Materials can change dramatically 

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at these cryogenic temperatures. Not always how you'd expect. 

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Let's see what happens to this football in Liquid Nitrogen, which is still 

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about 70 to 100 degree warmer than some of Webb's instruments. 

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The ball's inner rubber bladder shattered

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at this temperature but, wow, the outer shell holds 

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together! Webb’s instruments on the other hand are built to

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withstand such extreme temperatures. Not the sledgehammer

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by the way! Test, test and test

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again is the key. We’d rather have something break during 

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a test on the ground where we can understand the problem and fix it, than

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in space. Soon the Telescope will be heading to Johnson Space Center

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in Houston Texas for some more testing before it heads to 

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to Northrop Grumman in California to be assembled and packed into a rocket.

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The Telescope will be launched from French Guiana in 2018.

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This football may not be space worthy, but

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it sure works well here on Earth! Check out

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nasa.gov/jwst to learn more about this 

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incredible mission that is the follow-on to the Hubble Space Telescope.

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Beeps