Space Observation, Evolved: The James Webb Space Telescope

In our Season 1 finale, host John Arnold speaks with Dr. Begoña Vila, instrument systems engineer for the James Webb Space Telescope, about the landmark space observatory’s design, development and launch preparations. Dr. Vila also shares details about the telescope’s historic mission to help humankind solve the mysteries of our solar system, to see distant worlds, and to investigate the origins of the solar system.

NOTE: At time of recording, the telescope launch was scheduled for December 22. It is now scheduled for December 24.

Transcript

IN ORBIT: A KBR PODCAST

Episode 9

“Space Observation, Evolved: The James Webb Space Telescope”

INTRO

John Arnold

Hello, I'm John, and this is In Orbit.

TRANSITION

John Arnold

Hello, and welcome again to the podcast. We are so glad you're listening. Though produced by KBR, this is a podcast for everyone inside and outside our business, that talks about what's happening around the world and in our various industries, and that keeps us all connected and in each other's orbit.

This will be the final episode of our first season, and what a way to wrap things up for 2021. I get excited about every episode, but I am particularly excited about this one. Last month, we did an episode about the work KBR does with the Landsat program out of the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science Center. To recap, Landsat uses satellites to gather images from space that help scientists and researchers around the world to better understand how the Earth is changing over time, to monitor global issues like natural disasters and urban sprawl, and to observe how humankind is using or misusing our natural resources. If you haven't listened to that one, episode seven of this season, please go back and check it out at your leisure. Our guest, Doug Jaton, was excellent, and the work the KBR team is doing with Landsat is incredible.

Well, today, in this episode, we're going to be talking about a project that KBR is helping to deliver that will allow scientists to look just a little farther afield. I'm talking about making observations on an interstellar level, and collecting images and data that will help us solve the mysteries of our solar system, see distant worlds around other stars, and even investigate the origins of our universe. That project, I should say, monumental collaborative scientific undertaking, is the James Webb Space Telescope.

With us to talk about it, we're thrilled to have Dr. Begoña Vila. Dr. Vila is an instrument systems engineer for the James Webb Space Telescope. Her work with the Webb telescope began in 2006 with Canadian company, COM DEV International, where she helped develop the technology that the telescope will use to observe the universe. After that, she led cryogenic testing of the telescope's instruments in the Space Environment Simulator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and supported cryo testing at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Since then, Dr. Vila has worked on testing and commission planning for the Webb Telescope as part of a larger team out of Goddard that includes KBR employees and personnel from NASA, and that team works with an even larger team that includes personnel from the Space Telescope Science Institute, Northrop Grumman, and many other organizations.

Right now, at the time of this recording, she is speaking to me from Kourou, French Guiana, where she is helping prepare for the telescope's launch on December 22nd, coming up soon. And when it launches, the James Webb Space Telescope, which has been developed in partnership with the European and Canadian Space Agencies, will be the world's premier space science observatory. Dr. Vila, welcome to the show.

Begoña Vila

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

John Arnold

The pleasure is ours. Dr. Vila, in reading about the development of the James Webb Space Telescope and its scientific purpose, words like historic and important just don't seem to do it justice. It's taken more than two decades and thousands of people to get to this point, and you've been there for much of that journey. How are you and the rest of the KBR team and the broader team feeling now, just a few weeks from launch?

Begoña Vila

I think it's a mixed feeling. We are all super excited, we are, we can all sense that we are, as you said, launching so soon. We are going through the standard procedures that we know we have to do, the final rehearsals for what will happen on the launch date. But at the same time, I know I'm a little bit nervous inside, I'm sure we all are. It's the real thing, so super excited but also hoping everything will go well and looking forward to it.

John Arnold

Excellent. I don't have anything as a frame of reference for the amount of pressure and excitement that you must be feeling, but I can imagine that it's quite high.

Begoña Vila

Yes. Indeed, I think we are all. Yeah. Working towards it, yeah.

John Arnold

Well, we'll get more into what happens at launch and afterward, but first I'd like to talk to you about the telescope's instruments, including ones that you helped develop and test. The fine guidance sensor and the near infrared imager are essential for the Webb Telescope's mission, specifically helping it point precisely and see accurately. The near infrared spectrograph will provide some of the science data. Will you tell us what these instruments do, and how the technology differs from an observatory or an instrument like the Hubble Space Telescope?

Begoña Vila

Yes. You mentioned those two instruments which are the Canadian contribution, that's why I started working on them. The fine guidance sensor, as you indicate, is the one in charge of pointing the observatory and keeping it stable so then all the other science instruments can take images and spectra without the observatory moving.

It works in conjunction with the altitude control system that is a part developed by the Northrop Grumman team. We look at a star, we tell its position very accurately, 16 times every second. And then there are a certain closed-loop operation that keeps the observatory stable. It's critical for the mission for it to work. It has been challenging. It's looking on the infrared with a sensitivity that the James Webb has that no other telescope has had before. We have had to work with different information that we have had to adapt to make sure we think everything is going to work and we can test it, to have the accuracy that we need.

The NIRISS (Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) is a science instrument, as well as the other three instruments. And it has … all the instruments looking in the infrared have these special detectors that are specifically developed for these wavelengths that James Webb is going to see. It has a combination of grisms which allow spectras to be taken. And NIRISS is optimized for, amongst the various things it can do, for finding planets around other stars, where the planets are close to the star. That's a challenging area, because the brightness of the star makes it difficult. But then we know, if we think about the Earth, that's where the Earth-like planets are. So, it's really cool to have that capability.

The other instruments that James Webb carries, they each have a special technologies as well. I think you probably know one of them. Two of them come from Europe. One of them has the capability of taking up to 100 spectra at the same time. It has a set of shutters that can open and close. The other one, coming from Europe as well, carries it’s own cooler to make it colder on orbit — it's own freezer, so we can look further into the infrared. And then the final instrument is the contribution from the U.S. It's an imager with again a very high sensitivity. So, lots of clever things on the instruments to do the science that Webb needs to do.

John Arnold

That's incredible. Before the Webb Telescope gets to where it's going to perform its mission, it has to withstand the vacuum of space and very cold temperatures, down to -387 Fahrenheit. Will you please tell us about your and the KBR team's work in the cryogenic testing process, and what that entailed to ensure that these instruments are going to be able to work in that harsh environment?

Begoña Vila

Yes, very good question. Exactly, James Webb, because it has to look on the infrared, it has to get really cold. Everything emits on the infrared, which is heat. So if you're looking for these faint signals from these far away objects, you need to cool down everything else.

You know when you put materials at those cold temperatures, that they are going to move. They are going to point in different directions, and they are going to behave differently. I always like to mention, if we put something in the freezer at home, we know it changes how it looks like. But we don't work on that environment. So you have to build a telescope at our normal temperatures and in a way you are pointing it at ambient, aligning everything. If you look at it at ambient you will say, I think that's incorrect. Because you have to think, how is it going to change once it gets cold?

Then, it's crucial to have these tests on these cryo chambers, where you can pull vacuum and you can do those very cold temperatures with helium and nitrogen. You put your instruments and your telescope in there, and then you can see for sure, have you done it correctly? Did everything move where it needed to move? Is everything aligned properly at those temperatures? Then, can you operate? Can you take images, and take those spectra with those detectors? Does everything work? Does everything handshake?

They are difficult tests to run. You have to be very careful not to damage what you are testing, cool down very carefully. You always have to optimize the testing you can do. You have to prioritize. You cannot test everything, so there is a lot of effort as systems engineer to prioritize what you really need to test. And that's what we have done, at Goddard in the chamber, and then in the chamber at Houston, which is where the Apollo mission was tested too.

It's a much bigger chamber, we needed that larger chamber because in there we were testing the instruments and the mirror, so it's a much bigger observatory at that time. Critical testing for anything that you are going to launch into space, to duplicate the conditions it will see there.

John Arnold

Absolutely. We mentioned Hubble. Compared to Hubble, which actually looks sort of like a telescope with that cylindrical body, the Webb looks like something straight out of science fiction. It's beautiful and it is enormous. It's the largest and most powerful space telescope ever built. For context, if you don't mind Dr. Vila, I'll just give our listeners a little bit. The extended five-layer sun shield, the largest ever, is 69 and a half feet long and 46 and a half feet wide, so roughly the size of a full tennis court. The primary mirror, which you were just talking about, which is also the largest ever, is made up of 18 smaller gold-plated, I believe, it's beryllium hexagonal segments?

Begoña Vila

Correct.

John Arnold

And that, when it's fully unfolded, is six and a half meters, or more than 21 feet, in diameter. It seems intuitive that to do the science mission that the Webb Telescope is supposed to do, that it would need to be that big. But will you tell us why it was necessary for the telescope to be so large?

Begoña Vila

It's all driven by the science. The goals of James Webb is to, what we say, look back in time to those first galaxies and stars that were formed. How did they change, in those 13.5 billion years, to the galaxy where we live? And then those first stars that exploded to make the elements that made us, how did they happen and how do they change?

And then also, looking for those signs of life in other planets. What's the atmosphere of those planets? That's the goals from the science. It needs an infrared telescope. So the first thing you have to do is think about cooling it down, because otherwise it's going to be too hot, too warm, and you won't be able to detect the signal. That drove the need to have a sun shield. The sun shield is like a beach umbrella. It will always be facing the sun and the Earth. And the instruments and the mirrors will always be on the shady side. That sun shield is what allows the instruments and the mirrors to get to that cold temperature that you said, of 40 degrees above absolute zero for operations.

And then the other science driver was what signals are we trying to detect? They are very faint, so of course if you have a bigger mirror, it's a bigger bucket. You can collect more signal. But that's when it comes into play, the constraint you have when you launch something into space is the size. It has to fit within the rocket. So James Webb is innovative then on the engineering side because of that. It is the first time we are going to do this big mirror. It doesn't fit in one piece. It's made of 18 smaller mirrors that we can fold, put inside the rocket, and we'll open them when they are in orbit.

Similarly, that large sun shield is a great concept. We know what it needs to do. We cannot launch it in that way. We have to fold it and open it. All of that drove, the combination of the science drove the size of what could be done, and it made the telescope really large. I always think James Webb is innovative for the engineers, because they are going to validate this new way of sending things into space that are much bigger. And also, of course, from the science, for looking at the universe with these new eyes.

John Arnold

I mean, it is. It's incredible when you go to the website — and I encourage everyone listening to run, don't walk, go run to JWST.NASA.gov — and look at how this instrument unfolds and packs into this rocket fairing. Just to give some context, so now we're in the launch phase, this massive structure will be folded up essentially like a page in a pop-up book or a piece of origami, and then packed into the tip of one of the world's most powerful rockets.

And then, inside this bullet-shaped compartment, which is 5.4 meters, I believe —just shy of 18 feet in diameter — that's a super tight space for something this large to fit into. And then it's going to be fired into space, which is not a gentle process. I mean, you see in the movies and other things, astronauts and space travelers shaking. There's a lot of shaking and vibration. My next question is, what measures have been implemented to make sure that all of the sensitive equipment that you and your teams have been working so hard on for decades, doesn't get harmed during the launch process?

Begoña Vila

Again, another excellent question. It's part of the testing that you need to do when you send something to space. We talked before about duplicating the conditions it will see there. That's why you use the cryo chambers. But, yes, the worst part of the journey is the launch. That launch is going to shake everything that you send. It's going to be really noisy so that's going to have an acoustics vibration.

You know the levels of your launcher, and you're always going to test to above that margin, to know that you have margin. You start that testing at the sub-system level. So each of the components that make the instruments had their own vibration and acoustics testing, as well as their cryo testing. Then, you put it together and you repeat the testing to make sure as you assemble things that you haven't done something that you shouldn't, or it's not quite right.

That's one of the reasons the James Webb, it has had a very intensive testing to do all of those campaigns. And then the other thing you have to do, as far as testing, is the electromagnetic, electrostatic testing. You are putting all these different components together. Once they are in space you want to talk to them, and you don't want to have interference. Right? I want to tell this thing to do, and I don't want to have, like we do sometimes on the phone, where we can hear somebody else talking. That's part of these testing that we have done at different phases throughout all the build-up of James Webb, to make sure we are ready, and we think everything is going to be good.

John Arnold

Well, in these days before launch coming up on December 22nd, what are you and your teams doing? What are your days like right now?

Begoña Vila

Well, so, when it first arrived here at the beginning of October, we have a set of standard ambient tests that we can do, where we power certain components to show the shipment went okay. And then we can do inspections. And then that standard set of tests we do through the different phases, like before and after fueling, once it goes inside the launcher. So, if you are here at the launch site, it depends a lot on what's your area of expertise. You can be part of the mechanical team that will be doing the inspections, or you can be part of the contamination team — make sure everything is still as clean as it should be.

In my case, I'm part of electrical and functional team, so I support, as soon as we turn on and run through the tests with the rest of the team, to make sure everything works. Now, in the time that we have left, we have three of these aliveness tests that we need to do — pre-encapsulation, and then once it is on the launchpad. And then we also are going to do a couple of these mission dress rehearsals. I mean, we have prepared for the launch but then we need to know what's going to happen, those two days before launch. We have it planned minute and minute. And we also have planned the next six months, minute by minute. We are rehearsing all of these with the real thing now, so we have a few of those coming up and then the final countdown that will be two days before launch, we'll start running through the sequence and proceed forward.

John Arnold

Yeah. An extraordinary level of detail, I'm sure. Let's assume — we'll just go ahead and cross our fingers — but we're going to say the launch is successful. Everything went to plan. How long, or about how long, will it be before the Webb Telescope begins collecting images? And once it's collecting those images, how long is the relay process from telescope to scientist here on Earth?

Begoña Vila

Yes. If after the launch — so we have a detailed plan which actually is six months. And that, those six months are divided into roughly certain areas. The first month is dedicated mostly to those deployments we have been talking about. We know we need our solar array, and that happens with half an hour of the launch, because we need the power, we need the antenna to communicate. And then, within three, four days, we'll start the deployment of that sun shield. At that time, James Webb will be around the moon on its way to its final destination. And it takes a few days to open the sun shield, and we have to open those mirrors, et cetera. So, we have a first month that we call a “month of terror” because different things have to happen.

And then, after that, once that sun shield opens, the instruments and the mirrors start to cool down. So we are going to monitor that everything goes cold as it should. And we turn the instruments, and we have to align those mirrors. I mean, it's a great concept to have 18 mirrors that are going to behave like a single mirror, but once we take the first image of a star, about 35 days after launch, on the ground we are going to see 18 stars. Each of the mirrors is going to behave as a single mirror, so we have a detailed process called wavefront sensing and control that takes about three months to make sure the mirrors are indeed a single mirror.

And then, we have two more months to calibrate each of the instruments in all their observing modes. So, long answer to say the first images will come around that six-month mark. There is a set of programs that has already been chosen to showcase what James Webb can do with all the instruments in all the different modes it can observe. And that data, once it's taken, it comes down to the ground very fast. We will be in contact twice a day, so within a day or two we should get the data, it needs to run through the calibration pipeline.

That data will be open to the public. That one is for all to see. So, I will say about six months. Of course, we will see a little bit earlier because we need to use the instruments for the commissioning period. But that's the mark, is to be waiting for that time to see the real science coming down.

John Arnold

I will be waiting with bated breath to see those first images. I am so excited. I can't imagine how excited you and your teams are and will be in six months' time. But my final question for you, before I let you go, is what is a phenomenon or mystery, an interstellar mystery, that you are particularly hopeful that the Webb telescope will help us to better understand?

Begoña Vila

Well, so we have these great science goals and I think we all want to see them. Right? And those first images and spectra are going to do that. The first image that will say, “Hey, this is the universe. This is an image of these galaxies that are ...” I think that will be exciting. A new star formation. Building up on some of the things that Hubble has shown us. All of those will be super exciting.

And also, the first atmosphere of one of those exoplanets, right? An analysis to say — or [the] TRAPPIST seven, I think some people know about that. There are lots of super cool science. Also in our solar system. We are going to also be looking in these special wavelengths there. But I think we are all looking forward to those. We have exciting times throughout those six months as different things happen. But I think we are all waiting for the unknown, right? Which is these image or this information that at first glance we don't understand. Because I think that's what teaches us further. We have an idea of how the universe form, or how a process should be, and then when you see something different is when you go, “Okay. What could this be?” And maybe it opens up. I think we are all looking a little bit for that something different to excite our curiosity, and the next generation's, to help it answer too.

John Arnold

It's so exciting. Dr. Vila, I am so thrilled that you took the time to join us. And I hope that you will come back again in a few months perhaps after the, or sooner, after the launch, the successful launch — we're putting that out in the universe — of the James Webb Space Telescope. But, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it immensely, and good luck.

Begoña Vila

Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it. And maybe I will say NASA will be showing the launch prior and then live from Kourou, and we are also going to have it in Spanish, which I thought was really nice. And I'll be doing that live broadcast. Whatever language, please join us, and I hope you celebrate with us. Thank you very much for having me, and look forward to talking with you again.

John Arnold

Most definitely will be tuning in for the launch. And again, good luck.

Begoña Vila

Thank you.

WRAP-UP

John Arnold

What a treat it was to speak with Dr. Vila. We want to thank her again for her time, and we're sending our best to her and all the folks from KBR and other organizations who are involved with the James Webb Space Telescope mission and wishing them well for the upcoming launch.

For anyone wanting to learn more about the Webb telescope, again, you can visit JWST.NASA.gov, to access a treasure trove of great information, videos and interactive elements that let you explore the whole journey from conception, to launch, to eventual deployment.

We hope to catch back up with Dr. Vila, and perhaps some other members of the KBR team working on the Webb telescope, to speak with us after launch, and as the telescope is going through its commissioning phase. So be sure to stay tuned for that.

And with that, we close out our first season of the In Orbit podcast. Thank you so much for listening along. We hope you have enjoyed learning more about the amazing work KBR is doing to bring science, technology and engineering solutions to the world, and about the amazing people who are making that work possible.

We'll be kicking off a new season in January, so we hope you'll join us for that then. If you have an idea for future episodes, let us hear about it at inorbit@kbr.com. In the meantime, from the entire In Orbit team, we hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season if you're celebrating, and we wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous new year. Take care.