The final frontier

In October of 2018, products from a Cook Group company will go where very few have gone before—outer space!

We’re excited to share that K-Tube Technologies manufactured select components aboard the new telescope that NASA describes as “100 times more powerful than Hubbel.”

NASA is currently constructing the James Webb Space Telescope, an orbiting infrared observatory that will extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes referred to as the JWST) will have longer wavelength coverage that will allow it to observe some of the most distant objects in the universe, including the formations of the first galaxies.

The JWST is slated to launch in October of 2018 on an Ariane 5 rocket in French Guiana. Mission assurance testing of the flight system will guarantee five years of operation, but the telescope will carry enough fuel for a 10-year lifetime. The JWST will not orbit around the Earth, but will actually orbit around the sun over one million miles away.

That’s easily the furthest Cook has ever been!

It is not the first time Cook has been in space, though. In 1991, a specially produced Cook catheter, the CPUMY-400-NASA-401J, was used aboard the space shuttle Columbia to measure and record pressure changes during special life sciences mission. Read the article from a 1991 Cook Angiogram, “Cook Catheters On-Board Columbia Space Shuttle.”

To learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope, watch this short video:

Top Ten Facts about the James Webb Space Telescope

If you’d like to learn more about K-Tube Discover, our program for engineers inventing new and innovative products, take a couple of minutes and watch the video below.