A Microshutter-Based Field Selector for JWST's Near Infared Spectrograph

One of the James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST) primary science goals is to characterize the epoch of galaxy formation in the universe and observe the first galaxies and clusters of galaxies. This goal requires multi-band imaging and spectroscopic data in the near infrared portion of the spectrum for large numbers of very faint galaxies. Because such objects are sparse on the sky at the JWST resolution, a multi-object spectrograph is necessary to efficiently carry out the required observations. We have developed a fully programmable microshutter array that will be used as the field selector for the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on JWST. This device allows slits to be opened at the locations of selected galaxies in the field of view while blocking other unwanted light from the sky background and bright sources. In practice, greater than 100 objects within the field of view will be observed simultaneously. In this paper, we describe the microshutter arrays, their development, fabrication, testing, and progress toward delivery of flight qualified devices to the NIRSpec instrument team in 2008.