Webb Space Telescope: Building the Next Discovery Machine

01What we hope to learn from Webb is more about our universe, the building blocks of how we got here.

02Being more on the engineering side of things, once this satellite goes up, our work is quote unquote done, because it's already assembled in space and we rely on the scientists on the project to give us the data necessary.

03But I'm really interested to see what we get back to see a better understanding of our universe as a whole.

04This is NASA's Curious Universe.

05Our universe is a wild and wonderful place.

06I'm Patti Boyd, and in this podcast, NASA is your tour guide.

07NASA's soon-to-be-launched James Webb Space Telescope is such a fascinating mission that we are dedicating four episodes of Curious Universe to learning about its science, engineering, people, and launch.

08This is part two of our Webb mini-series, and we're talking about engineering.

09Once it's out in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope is going to make incredible discoveries about planets, black holes, galaxies, and more.

10But how do you design a telescope strong enough to face the harsh environment of space and send back revolutionary information about our universe?

11Hi everyone, my name is Kenneth Harris.

12I am a satellite engineer on the James Webb Space Telescope.

13Engineers like Kenneth were tasked with a tricky job.

14Design and build a new telescope that will do all of the science we mentioned in our last episode.

15Sounds simple, right?

16Not quite.

17Scientists and engineers have spent years planning for the James Webb Space Telescope.

18After all, this telescope has a very important role to play.

19So, what is it?

20The James Webb Space Telescope is basically a space observatory.

21It's the size of a tennis court, and so much amazing technology is put into this thing that it's an amazing structure to see and to have worked on.

22Webb is a discovery powerhouse that's designed to look back in time and record information about the cosmos in infrared light.

23With 18 hexagonal mirrors coated in gold, the telescope is truly a spectacle to look at.

24But its alluring designs hold great meaning.

25Scientists will use Webb to unlock mysteries of our cosmos and learn more about the first galaxies to ever exist.

26Webb engineers were able to build off of some existing technology, including from previous telescopes.

27But many things needed to be outright invented for Webb.

28Webb, some of those new inventions include specialized light detectors and new sunshield materials.

29A few of those inventions are already being used on Earth in eye surgery and other areas.

30And with a mission like Webb, everything is connected.

31Webb is made up of a number of subsystems.

32As an integration engineer, what you basically do is take these different subsystems and combine them into one to make sure things are functioning properly.

33I assemble things from IKEA, basically.

34You have this huge structure, you have this set of instructions, and you're putting it together.

35It's a lot more complicated than that, but essentially I'm a builder.

36For small kids, I'm often related to Legos.

37For just like, hey, have you ever put these Lego sets together?

38It's just like that.

39You have this really, really complex structure.

40You've got this amazing team behind you.

41You've got these procedures that you put a ton of hours into and a ton of thought into, and you're really just on the floor, in the clean room, executing what's on paper.

42A clean room is exactly what it sounds like.

43A room that's extremely sanitized.

44It's a special design laboratory where engineers tinker with the tools that will eventually go to space.

45NASA uses clean rooms to keep our spacecraft safe from earthly contaminants, like dust or hair.

46The SISTIF, which is at Goddard, is one of the largest clean rooms in North America.

47It's this gigantic room.

48This gigantic room.

49That is kept at a certain air purification level.

50That allows us to work on this extremely sensitive material that eventually goes into space.

51And we've realized that we need to work in clean room environments because of just how sensitive these materials are.

52Even dust on one of the mirrors would be bad news.

53So that's why we use a space like this.

54And a clean room needs to meet such specific conditions that you can't just waltz into one.

55You've got to wear a protective suit.

56It's what scientists and engineers call bunneying up.

57Before getting into a clean room, you put on a white suit, white cap, and white booties.

58Which makes you look like, well, a large white rabbit.

59This is a weird thing where you have the unclean side and then the clean side of the clean room.

60So you put on one boot on one side.

61You swing your leg over, put that boot onto the clean side while keeping your other leg in the air, and then put the other boot on.

62And now both of your clean feet are on the clean room side, and nothing's on the unsanitized side.

63The first time it took me about 15 minutes to do all that, understanding it.

64Then I got quick with it.

65It was probably five minutes after that.

66But that's just a staging area.

67And then depending on what clean room you're in, you might have a pre-clean before you get into the clean room.

68It's kind of confusing.

69Between all the different pieces that make up the telescope, Webb has spent years in clean rooms around the world.

70But it didn't all come together in one room until the summer of 2019 in Redondo Beach, California.

71That's when engineers at Northrop Grumman Space Systems put the telescope part of Webb on top of the sun shield and connected all of the wires together to make it a single spacecraft.

72A few months after launch, Webb will need to do an intricate unfolding maneuver in order to actually be able to use those fancy tools we've talked about and send back information to scientists eagerly waiting on the ground.

73While in orbit, Webb will unfold its delicate, five-layered sun shield.

74Webb will then deploy its primary mirror, which scientists will use to detect the faint light of faraway stars and galaxies.

75My name is Joe Sprofera.

76I kind of have a number of different titles, but the main thing I do is work on deployments and operations for the vehicle here at Space Park at Northrop Grumman.

77Just like a sports team practices before a big game, engineers run multiple tests here on Earth before the telescope is cleared to launch.

78This is crucial so that engineers can anticipate how Webb might perform under different circumstances and tackle any issues before the telescope even touches the launch pad.

79In 2020, Webb went through its final round of what engineers like Joe call environmental tests.

80That's because these tests mimic the space environment Webb will encounter after launch.

81Most recently, the telescope went through acoustic and vibration testing.

82During these tests, engineers shake and vibrate Webb to see how it will hold up during launch.

83When we come out of that testing, the main thing we look to do is check the state of health of the vehicle and do a bunch of tests.

84And that includes doing actual deployments of the physical system to show that the system survived the tests and is functioning as we would want it to.

85But engineers don't want to just test that Webb's deployments are working properly on Earth.

86They want to see how it might do in space.

87Since we can't copy the exact environment on the ground, we simulate the space conditions in a test environment as best we can.

88The way in which we simulate deploying in a zero gravity field is special hardware that we've designed that connects to the spacecraft.

89We use special equipment, a lot of times something like cables, pulleys, weights and counterbalances that will help react the weight of the hardware on the ground so that it doesn't have to see those non-flight loads during a deployment test.

90The more interesting days involve running tests in the high bay.

91And deployment days are, I think, really the best engineering days.

92You're out there with a big team on the floor, with a lot of experts in design and analysis and conducting tests.

93We're out there as a big team running these deployments with all of the offload equipment hooked up to the flight hardware that we're monitoring and tracking as we command it through the flight electronics.

94You're actually seeing the vehicle move and reconfigure from a stowed state to a deployed state like it will following launch on orbit.

95That's kind of the culmination of everything that's been done for, you know, the last 20 years on this program, where all the analysis and design work between the flight hardware and the mechanical ground support equipment that ties into it to let us do these tests comes together to execute this big event on the ground.

96Those are the fun, exciting days.

97Pulling off a mission like Webb involves a grand orchestration of engineers and scientists all across the globe.

98From assembling very large aspects of Webb, like the hexagonal mirrors, to crafting the smallest tools on the telescope, every person who is a part of the mission has a key role to play.

99And the instruments aboard Webb, which will collect valuable scientific information, represent a lot of careful engineering work and state-of-the-art technology.

100Let's take a closer look at one of those instruments.

101My name is René Doyon.

102I've been working on James Webb since 2001, the early days of JWST.

103I am the principal investigator of the FGS Nearest Instrument on board James Webb.

104I'm basically the PI of the Canadian Instrument.

105René is a professor at the University of Montreal, and he oversees one of several instruments on the observatory.

106The instrument he oversees will help Webb capture a lot of new information.

107One of its primary functions will be to help Webb detect light emitted by faraway worlds, called exoplanets.

108But that's not all.

109It's actually two instruments in one box.

110So let me talk about the FGS, which is not a scientific instrument, but it's a mission-critical system.

111Whenever Webb will point to the sky, any object, it picks up a little star and correct the vibration the telescope is experiencing.

112So this is very critical to keep the images very, very sharp.

113On the other side of the same box is called NIRIS, which stands for the Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, which is basically an infrared camera.

114And it has various observing modes to do various signs.

115And we're very much focused into two things, studying the early universe.

116So we have a mode where we can take spectra of all the sources in the field.

117We have also another important mode, which is very specialized, very unique to the Webb instrument.

118It is specialized to look at very bright objects.

119And what we want to do there is study exoplanet atmosphere, looking at terrestrial planets that may be habitable to hot Jupiters.

120Hot Jupiters are a type of exoplanet that are pretty common.

121They're gas giant planets located very close to their stars.

122FGS NIRIS wasn't originally designed to look at exoplanets, but engineers adapted it.

123This Canadian instrument will look at all types of exoplanets and more.

124Though Webb is a large observatory, it's composed of many smaller instruments, each of which was carefully crafted by engineers.

125And that's the case with FGS NIRIS.

126It's about the size of big washing machines, mostly made of aluminum.

127It's got mirrors in there, very fancy mirrors that reflect lights and can take an image.

128And there's also a filter wheel, a dual wheel, which, you know, can select filters and also dispersing element prism to do all the various signs that we want to do.

129So much of engineering comes down to design, creating the right tool to get the job done.

130For René, working on Webb and representing the Canadian Space Agency on this historic mission has been a rewarding experience.

131It's been very exciting.

132This telescope would just revolutionize our picture of the universe in many, many ways.

133In the early days, it was basically some kind of a dream, right?

134To do these very first pictures.

135But, you know, we kept working on it and that's research.

136That's how research works.

137And you learn things and there were some failures.

138And it's not a straight line.

139It's a zigzag.

140Sometimes I go back backwards and then go forward again.

141And chance also is part of the game.

142That's how research works.

143It's very exciting.

144I'm very proud of it.

145The functionality of all of Webb's instruments will play a critical role.

146Webb's tools were engineered to do the best job possible.

147But there's beauty in these engineers' designs, too.

148The inspiration of James Webb, I think, is far-reaching because you have the opportunity to combine science with art.

149There's artistic feature of James Webb that can't go unnoticed.

150I would hope that individuals can see something that took so much time and that also is artistically creative and that so many minds have gone into.

151That individuals are inspired to continue to pursue whatever, you know, career path they're going after.

152And kind of see how it blends into the world of space.

153For Kenneth, the inspiration of working on a project like Webb goes beyond the beauty and potential for discovery.

154Kenny grew up watching his father build important projects right here at NASA.

155As a black American, seeing someone who looked like him and who cared about the same things he did inspired Kenny to pursue his career path.

156My greatest role model in my life is my dad.

157And he's also an engineer at NASA.

158So I spent, even before I was an intern, even before I had an opportunity, I spent a lot of time at NASA in Building 5 at his desk after school.

159He picked me up from school, me and my sister are from school.

160He'd bring us back to the office, say, hey, I got some work to finish up.

161Your mom will come get you soon or, you know, you'll stay with me until we leave.

162And he was so dedicated to his work, but still made time for his family, still made time for everything else he needed to do.

163I had the fortunate opportunity to see that an engineer isn't just someone that is confined to a lab or confined to their desk like they have a life.

164They're able to do these other things.

165And also saw an individual that looked like me in the field.

166And that was something that was really, really important to me.

167So many people have had a hand in bringing the James Webb Space Telescope to where it is now.

168And countless others will learn from this telescope for years to come.

169The international nature of the project, bringing people from different countries, backgrounds, experiences, and identities together, paves the way for the next generation of engineers and scientists to see themselves represented in the work and pursue whatever discoveries come next.

170This is a longer mission to get off the ground, I'd say.

171It also kind of pushes the envelope of persistence and dedication and passion for the field.

172At heart, everyone's really interested in seeing what happens with this thing.

173Everyone's really has this childlike innocence when it comes to science and technology.

174And we have a passion for what we do.

175When scientists first dreamed of a more powerful space telescope, the successor to our Hubble Space Telescope, we knew what we wanted to accomplish.

176But we didn't yet know how to get there, or what tools we'd need in order to make it happen.

177Now this behemoth telescope, the largest and most uniquely qualified telescope ever sent to space, will change the way we think about our place in the cosmos.

178When the telescope finally reaches its orbit and accomplishes all of the commissioning exercises, we'll finally begin to see our universe in a new light.

179We'll look at planets around other stars, stellar nurseries, and the first galaxies in a way we've never been able to do before.

180Scientists like me will start to sift through all the new and exciting data that this incredible machine is poised to discover.

181Like scientists everywhere on Earth, I can't wait to see what we find.

182And we are so thankful to the team of engineers around the world who turned the dream of Webb into an amazing reality.

183Next time on NASA's Curious Universe.

184When I was a child, I would actually gaze up at the stars at night and wish I could just grab one with my bare hands.

185If I could just reach far enough.

186And I certainly had nothing to lose.

187In the city apartment that I lived in with the police sirens going by, I would stare out of our little window at the stars and just lose myself, really.

188This is NASA's Curious Universe.

189This episode was written and produced by Katie Atkinson, Liz Landau, and Christina Dana.

190The Curious Universe team includes Maddie Arnold and Michaela Sosby.

191With support from Elissa Fielding.

192Special thanks to Ryland Hegey, Amber Strawn, Paul Geithner, Eric Smith, Natasha Pinole, Elise Fisher, Laura Betts, and the James Webb Space Telescope team.

193If you liked this episode, please let us know by leaving us a review, tweeting about the show at NASA, and sharing with a friend.

194Still curious about NASA?

195You can send us questions about this episode or a previous one, and we'll try to track down the answers.

196You can email a voice recording or send a written note to NASA-CuriousUniverse at mail.nasa.gov.

197Go to nasa.gov slash curiousuniverse for more information.

198Thank you.

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