CNES projects library

December 29, 2023

Jwst/Miri

MIRI is an infrared instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It acquires images in a range of wavelengths from 5 to 28 microns.

MIRI (Mid InfraRed Instrument) is a scientific instrument aboard the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). 

It is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990. But unlike its forerunner operating in the visible and ultraviolet portions of the light spectrum, JWST is designed to analyse infrared radiation. It is also considerably more powerful than Hubble, enabling it to observe even more-distant and therefore more-ancient objects. With JWST, it is now possible to view the first galaxies that formed in the Universe, and even to witness their birth. The giant telescope is also observing many other objects such as galaxies and exoplanets in detail, and looking inside their atmospheres.

There are four instruments on JWST: MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument, NIRISS (Near-InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph), NIRCam (Near-InfraRed CAMera) and NIRSpec (Near-InfraRed SPECtrograph).

MIRI was developed under the lead of ESA and national space agencies by a consortium of European laboratories working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It is the result of a collaboration between the United Kingdom (PI), France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.

MIRI consists of two main parts: spectrometers developed by the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and the MIRIM imager developed in France under CNES’s responsibility by the French atomic energy and alternative energies commission CEA, the LESIA space and astrophysics instrumentation research laboratory, the LAM astrophysics laboratory in Marseille and the IAS space astrophysics institute in Orsay).

MIRI features four observation modes: imaging, coronography, low-resolution spectroscopy and medium-resolution integral field spectroscopy. The first three of these are performed by MIRIM (Mid-InfraRed IMager).

The JWST mission is led by NASA in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). ESA provided the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with its partners, ESA was responsible for developing and qualifying adaptations to Ariane 5 required to launch JWST, and for launch services through Arianespace. It also supplied the NIRSpec instrument and 50% of the MIRI instrument.

With its improved performance, JWST hopes to see the " first light of the Universe", that is it is going to survey the sky approximately 13½ billion years in the past. It also has the capability to observe the formation of stars in molecular clouds and of solar systems around other stars, and to see planets similar to or bigger than Jupiter around stars.

Unlike Hubble, JWST is not in orbit around the Earth, but around the L2 Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system.