In early September 2010, the Canadian Space Agency has delivered
a test unit of its contribution to the James Webb Space
Telescope, successor of the Hubble Space Telescope, to NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The arrival of the
engineering test unit marks a major milestone for the Canadian
team. The hardware has been put through its paces at the
Canadian Space Agency's David Florida Lab to ensure that the
final version will function at peak performance. While all space
missions undergo extensive testing, this step is particularly
crucial for Webb: unlike Hubble, Webb will be located 1.5
million km from Earth, and will be too far to be serviced by
astronauts. Canada is providing Webb's Fine Guidance Sensor
(FGS), as well as one of the telescope's four science
instruments called the Tunable Filter Imager (TFI). Both are
being built in Ottawa and Cambridge, Ontario, by COM DEV
International for the Canadian Space Agency. The Fine Guidance
Sensor consists of two specialized cameras that are critica