JWSTJWST : Mid-InfraRed InstrumentMIRI

Welcome to the MIRI European Consortium Public Web Pages.

MIRI is one of three instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and will provide imaging, spectroscopy and coronagraphy at wavelengths of 5 to 28 µm. The project is an international partnership (50 / 50) between JPL and a nationally funded consortium of European institutes, working with ESA and NASA.

MIRI is designed to meet the science requirements of JWST for mid-IR capabilities. An international science team oversees the science requirements and guides their transformation into detailed instrument and operations requirements. It is the forum for discussion of instrument issues that might affect the science performance. The members of the MIRI Science Team are : George Rieke (lead), Gillian Wright (co-lead), Torsten Boeker, Tom Greene, Margaret Meixner, Michael Ressler (U.S. Instrument Scientist), Ewine van Dishoeck, and Christoffel Waelkens.

The MIRI team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will provide the focal planes and control electronics and software for the instrument, and the Cryo-Cooler that provides the special cooling of MIRI to 7K. JPL are responsible for the final integration of the overall MIRI system into the observatory and chair the joint working groups that coordinate European and American activities. The team is led by Graham Bothwell (manager), Mike Ressler, and Greg Goodson.

The European Consortium will design, build, integrate, and test the instrument "optical bench assembly" (consisting of an imager and two spectrometer modules, together with the focal planes and the associated electronics provided to us by JPL). It is led by Gillian Wright (UK), along with Pierre-Olivier Lagage (France), Thomas Henning, Dietrich Lemke (Germany), Ewine van Dishoeck (NL), Goran Oloffson (Sweden), Tom Ray (Ireland), Alex Zehnder (Switzerland), Hans Ulrik Norgaard-Nielsen (Denmark), Luis Colina (Spain) and Christoffel Waelkens (Belgium). The consortium project manager is John Thatcher at EADS-Astrium, Ltd.

These web pages highlight the work of the European Consortium in building and testing the optical systems of MIRI. They provide a description and pictures of the hardware that the Consortium is responsible for, and information about the consortium organisation.

The MIRI web pages provide a complete picture of all parts of MIRI.