James Webb Catenary Cable

Congratulations to NASA, NGC and ManTech on the successful deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope, especially unfurling the sunshield. The James Webb will replace the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope.  We are honored and grateful to have laser cut the sunshield’s catenary cables. These cables stretch out the sunshield’s five layers, preventing heat conduction between the layers and stopping rips, if/when micro-meteors blast through.  The sunshield keeps the telescope’s infrared detector cool enough to observe the very beginnings of the Universe.

Now that everything is up in space, it’s safe to confess that we hid an easter egg on our last cable. We laser scribed everyone’s names from the ManTech and PMF teams and it looked something like this…

 

First, we had to build a custom laser system to cut the cables which were so long we needed a reel-to-reel fixture for material handling. The cables were laser cut from rolls of razor sharp

50 μm thick stainless steel and Invar.  After they were cut, they were extended their full length for a meticulous inspection process to meet the stringent NASA specifications.