Space telescope instrument heads to US

A European contribution to the James Webb Space Telescope left London Heathrow airport Tuesday bound for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, officials said. The Mid Infra-Red Instrument (Miri) was flown on a British Airways jet bound for Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia, the BBC reported. The Webb telescope will be the successor to the Hubble orbiting observatory and aims to track down the very first stars to shine in the Universe with Miri, built by a pan-European consortium, playing a central role in the quest to identify that "first light," officials said. Miri will be taken to Goddard where it will be unpacked Wednesday and integrated into the telescope structure prior to further testing. For the flight to Washington the instrument was placed in an air-freight container -- with a few extras features. "Miri's box is a standard environment-controlled air-freight container, but we built a special structure inside to hold this incredibly valuable instrument," Piyal Samara-Ratna, a mechanical engineer from Leicester University overseeing the transfer, said. "It's impossible to insure something like Miri, which represents the time and effort of so many people in Europe and the United States."