NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

NASA has been working on a new space station for the past couple of years. It is called the "James Webb Space Station". Over the years it has been pieced together at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Recently, the space station was shipped off to Houston to the Johnston Space Center. The craft will undergo testing to make sure it is capable of surviving outside of Earth's atmosphere. This testing will mostly include cryogenic freezing, which mimics the environment in deep space. It is scheduled to launch in South America sometime in 2018.

The space station is not man operated, rather is one gigantic telescope. The telescope will be used for imaging of planets surfaces and other solar systems. It is not completely in Houston currently. The only part that is in Houston is the most important part of the telescope: its primary mirror. The primary mirror is comprised of 18 hexagonal pieces of gold-coated beryllium. The James Webb Space Station will use this mirror to gather light from other universes to study the formation of stars and entire galaxies. It spans over 21 feet in diameter, making it the largest telescope that NASA will have put into space. The JWSS surpasses NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in total area, being approximately six times as large. This primary mirror is what makes the JWST the most powerful telescope produced to date.

Before NASA can send their new baby into space, it must undergo cryogenic freezing in a vacuum chamber to mimic the conditions it will be subject to when it is in deep space. The JWSS has already passed the vibration and acoustic testing. These tests mimic the initial launch that the space telescope will undergo. The cryogenic freezing will be one of the final tests the space telescope must undergo. This will ensure NASA that the JWSS will be able to survive at its final position, 1,000,000 miles away from earth's surface.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/8/15578412/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-cryogenic-testing