A wunderkind of astronautical engineering during his 11 years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Edwards led the development of the world's first optical cryocooler, a breakthrough device that achieved supercold temperatures with no moving parts («It breaks two, if not all three, laws of thermodynamics,» he says), and designed missions to the moon and Jupiter's moon Europa. (discovermagazine.com)
The NCS is a mechanical cryocooler that will reenable NICMOS operation by cooling the instrument to temperatures around 75 - 86 K. (stsci.edu)
In the room outside, the refrigeration equipment emits a constant low humming, and the occasional high - pitched chirp courtesy of pulsing helium gas within the cryocooler. (canadianbusiness.com)