By Jimmy Simms
The Cullman Times

NASA has announced that Cullman-based Axsys Technologies, Inc. will manufacture the primary mirror for an $824.8 million telescope designed to look at the farthest outreaches of space.

According to company officials, the project could be valued at more than $17 million over four years.

"Everybody at Axsys is excited to be a part of what will be a historical and successful space program," Martyn Acreman, general manager of the Cullman plant, was quoted in published reports. "It's a sizable and important contract for the future of our business."

According to Acreman, the company will have to expand its plant by 30,000 square feet and add 25 employees for the project, which is expected to begin within the year.

Cullman Mayor Don Green said the announcement is great news for the community.

"We always knew Cullman had some of the most highly-skilled workers in North Alabama. It's amazing to me the type of precision work these people can do," Green said. "This is great news for our community, particularly the part about adding 25 new jobs. It appears Cullman will be under the microscope so to speak in the months and years to come and that's great."

NASA on Thursday announced it would use beryllium - a natural metal that is one-third lighter than aluminum and six times stiffer than steel - for the James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror. The beryllium design beat out another technology called ultra-low expansion glass during testing at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

Ball Aerospace is responsible for the primary mirror, which will be machined at Axsys.

According to NASA, the mirror will be 25 feet in diameter and will be launched almost one million miles from the earth, or four times farther away than the distance to the moon.

The Webb Space Telescope consists of one large mirror and two secondary mirrors. It was announced in June that Axsys Technologies would machine the two smaller mirrors.

The goal of the Webb Telescope - named for the NASA administrator during the Apollo lunar exploration program - is to look at the farthest outreaches of space observed by the Hubble and try to see some 10 billion light years away.

Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer with the Harvard University-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the Webb Telescope will help astronomers look for the "signatures of atmospheres and hopefully biological activity" on other planets.

The Webb telescope is scheduled for launch in 2011.

The Cullman Times, Sept. 13, 2003