Canada's $130-million contribution to the James Webb Space Telescope will give the country access to the largest ever space observatory when it's in orbit in five years.

The space telescope, which is the size of a tennis court, is expected to produce sharper images than the Hubble Space telescope.

Mark Clampin, the project's head scientist, says the $4-billion US telescope will provide an unprecedented view of the universe.

"It will have the largest mirror ever flown in space when it launches in 2013 and it will definitely open up a new era of discovery in astronomy," the NASA scientist said Monday as he stood next to a model of the giant telescope.

Isabelle Tremblay, a robotics engineer at the Canadian Space Agency, says the two Canadian instruments on board will be essential.

"The first is a fine guidance sensor, and without it the telescope doesn't work, because the sensor is used to point the telescope," she said in an interview.

"The precision we're going to achieve is unprecedented. It's like pointing to a dime that is 1,000 kilometres away."

Telescope to assist in search for life

The second instrument, the tunable filter camera, will help scientists search outside our solar system.

"For the first time, we'll be able to look at the composition of planets beyond the solar system," Tremblay said.

"We want to know if we're alone.… we want to know if life exists elsewhere and that's very exciting."

The James Webb Space Telescope was named after a former NASA administrator in the 1960s.

The Canadian instruments are being built by COMDEV of Cambridge, Ont.

Dr. John Hutchings, a Canadian project scientist with the National Research Council, is leading the science team.

"We're building it because it's gonna do the things Hubble couldn't do," he said in an interview.

"This is huge, it's much bigger, much more powerful. It's going to see further away and more amazing things than the Hubble did, and it's going to produce more sharper images."

Hutchings said the orbiting observatory will be used to look for chlorophyll, oxygen and water "and all the things that are signatures of a planet where life like ours can exist."

The telescope will be stationed 1.5 million kilometres from Earth – about four times the distance from here to the moon.

The telescope will be placed in the shadow of the Earth well outside its orbit, in one of five areas in space where the effects of gravity are nearly eliminated.

In exchange for its multimillion-dollar contribution, Canada will get five per cent of the observation time on the telescope.

Tremblay said that means research groups in Canadian universities will all have access to its data.

The space telescope has a large sun shield, which acts as an umbrella and allows it to cool down.

The European Space Agency is also involved in the project.