James Webb Space Telescope Significant Achievement Award

26 March 2013

Dr Gary Hawkins and Mr Richard Sherwood have been presented with an award from the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) for their extraordinary contributions to the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Observatory.

The award is in recognition of their extraordinary contribution to the JWST mission.

The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) is a cooled thermal-infrared imager (9 K) and medium resolution spectrometer (7 K) being developed for launch on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) by a NASA-led international consortium comprising the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, European partners sponsored by the European Space Agency, and an international science team. MIRI is one of three instruments on the JWST being designed to address many astrophysical topics, ranging from the understanding of the structure of the universe to the birth and formation of stars.

The University of Reading has been responsible for contributing to the instrument with the design and fabrication of specialist optical components in the spectrometer subsystem (5-29 µm), together with a set of precision bandpass filters (13-29 µm), and coronagraphic filters (15.5 and 23 µm) for the wide-field imaging camera.