WASHINGTON – Nov 4, 2022 – Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) in partnership with NASA received the Aviation Week Grand Laureate Award for its development of the James Webb Space Telescope.
This honor recognizes NASA and the Northrop Grumman industry team for building and delivering the world’s largest, most technologically advanced and powerful space telescope. Aviation Week announced the Grand Laureate winners at its 65th Annual Laureate Awards, highlighting major milestones in the aerospace field. The winners were selected from a total of 18 candidates.
“Northrop Grumman is honored to receive this prestigious award on behalf of the engineers, scientists, technicians and the entire team who brought this engineering marvel to reality,” said Tom Wilson, corporate vice president and president, Northrop Grumman Space Systems. “This important recognition represents Northrop Grumman’s groundbreaking engineering, mission success and partnership with NASA and the science community.”
The James Webb Space Telescope is an infrared telescope designed to see the first light coming from the earliest stars and galaxies in the universe. Now operational, Webb collects data and capture images for scientists back on Earth to explore farther than ever before into the cosmos, looking back over 13.5 billion years. To accomplish this, Webb incorporates innovative design and engineers developed 10 technological inventions for the telescope, including revolutionary optics, detectors and thermal control systems.
Northrop Grumman leads the industry team for the Webb program and NASA heads an international partnership that includes both the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency. Goddard Space Flight Center manages the Webb Telescope project, and the Space Telescope Science Institute is responsible for science and mission operations, as well as ground station development.
Northrop Grumman is a technology company, focused on global security and human discovery. Our pioneering solutions equip our customers with capabilities they need to connect, advance and protect the U.S. and its allies. Driven by a shared purpose to solve our customers’ toughest problems, our 90,000 employees define possible every day.