IMP Electronic Systems Contributions to James Webb Space Telescope

You wouldn’t necessarily link Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia with the far reaches of space, however, a high-skilled team of engineers and technicians from IMP Electronic Systems designed and manufactured wire-harnesses for the Fine Guidance System as part of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

IMP Electronic Systems was contracted to produce the wire harnesses in 2007, after being selected by Honeywell to manufacture, design, and test a range of qualification, engineering tests, and flight wiring harnesses. This project required IMP’s technical team to work closely with the Honeywell team to turn the grand vision of the JWST into a reality.

Successfully launched in December 2021, the JWST has wowed the world with its vivid and never-before-seen photos of our universe. Among the telescope’s many achievements is finding and photographing the oldest galaxy ever seen (13.5 billion years old), and capturing one of the first photos in decades of Neptune’s rings.

The IMP Electronic Systems team was required to meet strict contamination control requirements, in a Class 7 clean room that was outfitted with additional control measures.  Extremely low operating temperatures (-243^o C) were required for this project to mimic the vacuum of space, so a special cryogenic test chamber was built at Honeywell to test the manufactured qualification harnesses.

The JWST is a joint effort by NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency. NASA says the Webb Telescope will “study every phase in the history of our Universe” and, so far, the results have been most impressive.