How do you transport a 6,500 kg delicate space telescope across a road and ocean 5,800-mile journey? Very carefully!
The JWST was transported by road from Redondo Beach, California, to its nearby port of departure at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach in a specially designed “suitcase” known as STTARS, short for Space Telescope Transporter for Air, Road and Sea. STTARS itself weighs about 76,000 kg. It is 18 feet (5.5 meters) high, 15 feet (4.6 meters) wide, and 110 feet (33.5 meters) long — about twice the length of a semi-trailer.
STTARS sailed to French Guiana inside MN Colibri, a special Ro-Ro (roll-on-roll-off) cargo ship designed to carry rocket components and satellites. STTARS is also a mobile clean room. A sophisticated heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system built for STTARS monitored and controlled the humidity and temperature inside the container. Several accompanying trailers, loaded with dozens of pressurized bottles, provided a continuous supply of pristine, manufactured, dry air into the transporter’s interior.
In the loading video above, STTARS had to be first driven and loaded onto a barge from where it was gingerly wheeled into the cargo area of the ship. See www.nasa.gov/… for some interesting tidbits about this part of the journey.
The next leg of the journey
Having completed this perilous part of its mission, this is what is in store for the next million miles of its journey. No pirates expected on this leg but perils abound in this very complex deployment sequence in space.