Cosmic Dawn (2025)

[bunniefuu]

[ music ]

[ beeping ]

- Stand by for terminal count.

[ indistinct radio chatter]

- It's morning of launch,

almost 3:30.

And we're going to make

our fueling

go-or-no-go call soon.

- Okay. Take it away, Robert.

It's all yours.

- Merry Christmas

from the Guiana Space Center,

where the fueling of the vehicle

is moments away,

while weather systems

are being carefully monitored

for the momentous launch

of the largest,

most powerful telescope

ever sent away from our planet.

- It is the product of a feat

of human ingenuity.

- 14 countries

all working together.

- We want to look back

and see some of the very first

stars and galaxies

that were born

in the early universe.

- What we call cosmic dawn.

- We have to accept the fact

that we are in a risky business.

- Powerful storms hit the...

- Everybody said,

if James Webb is unsuccessful,

then NASA will never take on

a big challenge again.

[ music ]

- Now there's

a little pond down here.

- Yeah.

- Which there still is.

And used to come fishing

here occasionally.

- Well, I would like

to tell you the entire story

of the universe

and a bit about

how we learned about it

and my personal part

of this process

and-and where

we're going from here.

And the title slide here says,

"from the Big Bang..."

and on, et cetera,

"to the Discovery

of Alien Life."

And so we haven't

exactly found it yet,

but I think it's possible

in the next few decades.

And so I want to

outline at the very end

how we are hoping

to find out about that.

So there are many,

many mysteries.

I got interested

in math and science

when I was a little kid.

Here is a picture of the place

where I grew up.

My dad was a scientist,

but he studied dairy cows.

I heard from him

that people were made

out of cells with chromosomes.

I can remember

I was about six years old

and I had heard about infinity.

Oh, well, that's

pretty fascinating.

So, okay,

I want to know

more about this.

By eight years old,

I was reading Galileo

and Darwin biographies

and getting all the books

about science I could get

from the public library.

I latched on pretty early.

I knew when I got

into the mission

that it was going

to be exciting.

I said, this is

the coolest thing

I've ever heard of.

This is what I want to work on,

and I do not care

how hard it is

or how long it's going to take.

I just want to work on it

and make it happen.

I love the feeling of awe.

- But then sharing

that excitement with someone

is then the next best

feeling in the world.

- It's-it's super close,

but this one.

- Of these two?

One of the things

growing up in the city

that we didn't really ever see

was the sky.

I do remember

sort of one of these, like,

core childhood memories

is going up to Canada

on a family vacation,

and my parents

ushering me outside one night

to look at the Milky Way.

And I didn't understand

what it was.

And I was like,

there's milk up there?

They're like, no, no, no.

That's our solar system.

And we're looking up at all

the stars that you wouldn't

otherwise see.

And I just--

I really didn't comprehend,

because I had

no exposure to that

prior in my life.

And here I am, years later,

following the astonishing story

of the James Webb

Space Telescope.

- Nature has this way

of being even more creative

than we are.

So we have always been surprised

by what we see in the sky.

- This is, uh,

a really tremendous adventure

that we've been on.

- The first Hubble Deep Field

actually came out

when I was in high school.

I already knew

I wanted to be an astronomer,

but I remember

being just captivated

by these images that were

coming back from Hubble.

It blew my mind to see that--

that first deep field image.

And that was sort of

a, like, yup,

this is what I want to do.

- The earliest conception

of Webb derived from the fact

that Hubble took a deep field

and didn't see

newly formed galaxies

after the birth of the universe.

- It's sort of like

we're missing that

very first piece of the puzzle

of how galaxies

got their start.

- Every time NASA builds

a new telescope,

it needs to be

way more sensitive

than anything

we've ever built before.

So every time

you launched something,

it was a new window

on the universe.

And so for Webb,

we needed to build something

that was 100 times

more capable.

- The main thing that Webb

had to do to be successful

was find these

very first galaxies.

- To look back in time

to a part of space

that we've never seen before,

and see the very first epoch

of galaxies that were born

after the Big Bang.

- People think the Big Bang

is a mystery

because they think

it's not what it is.

The actual picture

that we have as astronomers

is the entire universe

is expanding.

The material is rushing

apart from other material

in a rather smooth,

continuous way,

while we see galaxies

rushing away from us.

So what's going

to make them rush apart?

Well, something

kicked them off that way.

But since we imagine

the universe is infinite,

it has to be

an infinitely large cause,

whatever that is.

So we just imagine

running the movie

backwards in our minds

until it's different.

So when you get farther

enough back in time,

the temperature and everything

is mushed together.

The galaxies are

mushed together.

The stars are mushed together.

The atoms are mushed together.

The atoms are torn apart

into their constituent

subatomic particles.

So that's the movie you get

if you run everything backwards.

So then when you

run out of imagine,

you say, that's the big bang.

So needless to say,

astronomers have been imagining

for a long time, what was this?

- I'd just call it

the Expanding Universe story

In "Calvin and Hobbes"

That was a different answer.

Calvin called it

the Horrendous Space Kablooey,

but that didn't catch.

- I'll now I ask you

to step forward

to receive your Nobel Prizes

from the hand of His Majesty

the King.

- And it was March of 1996

when John Mather

stopped in my office

out here at Goddard

and asked me

if I'd like to work with him

on a new telescope idea

he was thinking about.

And when John came by

and said-- this of course--

this was before

he had his Nobel Prize,

but everybody knew,

oh, if John

asks you to work with him,

You want to work with him.

So I said, sure,

that would be fun.

I figured, well, I'd do that

for a couple of years.

- So, Doctor Smith,

what is a next generation

space telescope?

- Well, the NGST,

or Next Generation

Space Telescope,

is the logical successor

to the Hubble Space Telescope,

or HST.

NGST is designed

to see the first stars

and galaxies

that light up in the universe.

And, well, here we are,

you know, more than

25 years later,

I'm still working on Webb.

- Apollo 8, over.

- Hello, Apollo 8.

Loud and clear...

- Administrator O'Keefe

renamed the Next Generation

Space Telescope

to the James Webb

Space Telescope

in honor of James Webb,

who was the second

administrator of NASA.

So why name it after this guy?

Well, James Webb

was largely responsible

for the success

of the Apollo program.

[ indistinct radio chatter]

- Roger, the EVA

is progressing beautifully.

- The Webb telescope

is kind of like my child,

because I've been working on it

since the first day

that we started.

So when I started on Webb,

my youngest son

had just been born.

Well, he's got

a master's degree,

He works at Johns Hopkins,

and he's going to be 28.

I had hair,

I didn't need hearing A*DS

or glasses.

And, yeah, it's a long--

it's a long time.

But-but in hindsight,

it's also a short time.

We had the singular purpose

for 25 years

to make the James Webb

Space Telescope a reality.

And you know, people did think

we were nuts at first,

because the technical

challenges

were so daunting,

and the number of things

we had to advance

or literally invent

were numerous.

- I remember we had a draftsman

who was able to draw

what we said on a whiteboard,

and we said we needed

a big telescope

with a big baffle,

a big umbrella to protect it

from the heat of the sun.

So he drew this

on the whiteboard

and we all said,

yeah, that looks pretty good.

We need something like that.

And it's going

to have to fold up.

And we started talking

about how it folded up,

and that was just the beginning.

And we knew we were

on to something.

- In the early parts

of the mission,

we talked to the scientists

and we find out,

what's the scientific

objectives of this mission?

What do you want it to do?

Right? Then we put that

into a language

that engineers understand

called requirements.

How big does it have to be?

What kind of sensitivity

do you want?

In other words,

what's the dimmest thing

you want to see?

- The James Webb Observatory

has three parts to it.

The first part is the telescope

and the science instruments.

This has to be very, very cold.

- It's designed to collect

infrared light.

So infrared is something

that you cannot really see

with your eyes.

The Hubble telescope

can see a little bit of it,

but it's-it's not cold.

So the Hubble telescope glows

and emits infrared light itself.

So you cannot use it

to do all of the things

that astronomers

have identified

as their next top priority.

This telescope is going to be

in outer space.

It's going to be cooled

to a very low temperature

of 45 degrees

above absolute zero,

so that it does not glow.

- There's one instrument

in there called the MIRI

that wants to be about

seven degrees Kelvin.

And to put that in perspective,

dry ice, carbon dioxide,

dry ice is at about

- 109 degrees Fahrenheit.

The second part

is the spacecraft bus.

And the spacecraft bus operates

at room temperature up here

at 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

And it has the usual subsystems

the communication subsystem,

the computer, the thrusters,

the electrical power system.

Then between the two

is the third part,

the sunshield,

five thin layers

about the size

of a tennis court

that separate the hot side

from the cold side,

five little layers

that keep this thing

in the shadows.

And this umbrella,

as we might call it,

is no ordinary umbrella.

On the hot side,

200,000 watts

of solar radiation strikes it,

and it can only allow

.02 watts to get through.

This umbrella is setting up

an almost 600 degree Fahrenheit

difference,

and if it were suntan lotion,

it would have an SPF

of 10 million.

- And it's going to

have to fold up.

And we started talking

about how it folded up.

And it's got to be bigger

than the Hubble telescope,

and it's got to get

way out there,

and we can't get it there

without a pretty big rocket.

So what's the biggest one

you can get?

Well, it's not all that big.

We're going to

have to make a telescope

that's much bigger

than the Hubble

and simultaneously

much lighter.

We ended up at half the mass

and seven times

the collecting area.

- All 13,670 pounds.

All six metric tons of this

has to be launched

a million miles

out in outer space,

and it has to fit

into a fairing

that's only about

five meters in diameter

when the size of the sunshield

is 21 meters in diameter.

So to do that,

we have to fold it up

like origami

so that it fits into here.

- Pretty soon we know

our job is pretty hard.

Okay, going to have

lots of inventions

along the way.

So we made up a list

of ten inventions

that we had to have

pretty quickly.

And we said, okay, world,

tell us how you can

make these inventions.

- You have to keep in mind

a lot of the technologies

for Webb were

new technologies, right?

So you have a plan on

how you are going to do it.

And when you are testing it,

lots of times

something doesn't work.

You have a schedule,

a certain amount of time

and a certain amount of money.

- Basically people, although

they don't quite say so,

they think your telescope

looks weird.

So...

our-our telescope

does look different

from every other telescope

you've ever seen.

It doesn't look like

Galileo's little tube

with a lens at each end,

way different from anything

that we've ever built

for anywhere before.

We're building a perfectly

great telescope on the ground.

We're aligning on the ground,

we're testing on the ground.

It's going to work

perfectly, right.

It's going to be great.

Then what do we do?

We bust it up, we fold it up.

We put it into

a launch vehicle.

Then once we get it on orbit,

and it deploys.

Now we got to realign it on

orbit remotely.

50 of the most complex

deployments ever attempted,

robotically.

??

- The telescope looks weird,

but that's a matter

of perspective.

To me, it looks beautiful.

- So that's your mission,

if you choose to accept it.

- Yes, we had 344

single-point failures,

295 of which were associated

with deployment--

almost all of which

would have been

mission ending.

- So, with Webb,

we should probably go back

to, you know, 1990,

with the launch of

the Hubble Space Telescope.

- And lift off

of the space shuttle Discovery

with the Hubble

Space Telescope.

Our window on the universe.

- NASA launches

the Hubble Space Telescope,

the biggest space science

mission ever.

- Discovery, Houston.

Performance is nominal.

- And shortly thereafter,

it's discovered that

its vision is blurry.

- Conclusion we've come to

from that, is that

a significant

spherical aberration

appears to be present

in the optics.

- I was devastated

because I'd worked

my entire career on Hubble

at that point,

- Congress had hearings.

Hubble's the butt

of late-night TV jokes,

and it becomes

a major embarrassment

and a major black eye

for the agency.

- Although the surface

of the mirror

was perfectly smooth,

the smoothest mirror

ever made by humans on Earth,

the trouble is,

it was too flat at the edges,

about a millionth of an inch,

which is less than

the diameter of human hair.

But that was enough to cause

the tremendously blurry images

that we saw.

My neighbors, who all used

to be very, you know, happy

and congratulating me

on working Hubble.

They'd come up to me

when I'm pushing my son around

in the stroller and say,

"Boy, it must be tough

working in a national disaster."

- We can characterize

the problem,

the spherical aberration

problem, well enough that,

uh, we can take advantage

of an insurance policy

that we haven't

talked much about.

And that is,

we started a long time ago

to plan a maintenance program,

that is, every three years,

we plan to go up

with a space shuttle,

uh, change out instruments,

change out things that broke.

- I come to NASA in 1991

as part of the team to help fix

the Hubble Space Telescope.

I end up leading a team

that's developing

corrective optics

for the telescope.

Astronauts install

the corrective optics,

and a new, updated camera.

- It's completely awesome

out here.

A lot of work, but, uh,

well worth it.

- And after five EVAs,

uh, spacewalks,

the astronauts came home.

And about two weeks later,

we took off the bandages

from our eyes,

and suddenly, Hubble was fixed.

It was totally fixed.

- The most significant

contact lens

in American history.

[ laughing ]

Over here is the picture taken

after the servicing mission.

- And it works beautifully,

in fact, better than

original requirements.

And it's still working today.

It's one of the most powerful

instruments that science

ever created.

- This is one of the things

about building JWST.

We didn't have that luxury

at L2, you know,

where we couldn't service it.

We knew that.

- The L2 point is chosen

for the Webb Telescope

because it's the first place

where you can go,

where the Earth and the sun

are always

in the same direction.

And so you can put up

your one-sided umbrella

and protect your telescope,

which you want to do either

to keep the telescope cold,

like the Webb.

If you send it

another few feet farther out,

it'll eventually escape

and go away from Earth.

If you let it stay a few feet

closer in, it'll fall back

towards Earth,

and have some kind of

interesting chaotic orbit.

Anyway, we wouldn't like that.

So it's the boundary

between Earth orbit

and solar orbit,

and that's a good place.

- We knew that this mission

was going to require

a number of test facility,

production facilities,

and test facilities

that didn't exist in the world.

- Right from

the very beginning,

we were told to please develop

an international partnership

to construct

the Webb telescope.

- Webb is a global effort.

NASA, ESA, CSA,

and contractors

all working together.

It was 14 countries

and more than 29 states,

all contributing to Webb.

- You know, I always called it

"The Giggle Factor"

a little bit, like,

can we really do this?

- This new telescope has,

I think about 64 megapixels.

- It's not like we could

build and test things

in those early days.

So, we were living

in virtual land as far as

computer simulations,

computer modeling.

You know, we had picked

our architecture in late 2002.

And, obviously,

that's when things

got really, really busy

with trying to make

this architecture feasible.

Uh, because I would say

even at that point,

we were not quite sure

it would all work at that time.

It just seemed so far out.

- Let's keep making progress

on the telescope,

because the more we get done,

the better the chance

this thing will keep going,

as a program.

- I think

of the technologies,

the ones that I remember were,

uh, most challenging were,

um, developing the material

for the primary mirrors.

We had a big effort

to determine what that material

would be.

- And it was a kind of

exotic choice.

We chose a material

called beryllium,

which is element number four

in the periodic table.

It's extremely stiff,

extremely light.

- It was the cryogenic

properties of beryllium

that really won out.

You know, it's-it's

how stable it was at,

at cold temperatures,

and its thermal conductivity,

how thermally stable

things were.

- When we mine the ore,

we have to drill through

and blast the rhyolite,

remove that, to get to

the volcanic ash layer

where the beryllium is.

- 10,000 years ago,

this was the bottom

of Lake Bonneville.

And millions of years ago,

it was an ancient ocean.

- So then it's pressed

into this 550 pound block

that's then machined out

until it's about 50 pounds.

Once that block is machined out

to about 50 pounds,

the backside is honeycombed.

It's really cool looking.

The front side gets polished.

We're attaching motors

to the back, so they can--

The mirrors can actually move

and flex up in space,

so they can align.

Then what we do

is we actually subtract

off gravity.

So we're building this

in a place that has gravity.

This telescope operates

in space.

It has no gravity.

The temperature change

that happens between Earth

and space actually deforms

the mirror significantly.

- You literally polish,

you know, the wrong surface

into a mirror,

so that when they cool down

and they change their shape

as they cool,

it's the right surface.

- And so, we actually make

the mirror less good

on Earth, so it can be

more perfect in space.

- We would then send them

to Huntsville, Alabama,

where we would test them

at Marshall,

and we would cool them down

to these very cold temperatures

and measure with

a special test device

how they change

as they cool down.

- Let's talk a little bit

about those

18 iconic gold mirrors

that are actually

on this telescope.

Amber, can you tell us

about the science

behind those mirrors?

- So, the reason

the mirrors are gold

in the first place is because

gold is a good reflector

of infrared light.

So we've already talked about

how Webb will view

the universe in the infrared

part of the spectrum.

And that means it will see

light that's just a little bit

more red than visible light

than what your eyes can see.

And so it turns out

that gold reflects

that type of light really well.

So that's sort of

the science behind

why the mirror is gold.

- So these are things

that people don't realize

it takes to, uh,

to get a telescope

like the Webb telescope built.

- But every week that went by,

you know, we started

getting questions like,

why is this taking so long?

And is this is going to go on

for-- you know, and there was

a lot of pressure.

- Okay. The Committee on

Science, Space and Technology

will come to order.

The James Webb Space Telescope

has been identified by

the astrophysics community

as its top priority.

- There were voices out there.

There was talk of,

oh, let's cancel this thing.

It was always a concern

of mine personally,

from long before,

we could end up like

the Superconducting

Super Collider, right?

Don't want Webb

to end up like that.

You know, a really large

science project ended up being

too much and too long,

and people lost the stomach

to, um, see it through.

- Thank you for the question.

- Congress got

really worried about

our Webb telescope and said,

isn't that kind of crazy

not to be able to service it?

And the answer is, yeah,

that's the only choice we had.

- The James Webb

Space Telescope

is another case study

of NASA's mismanagement.

- Now, how can we justify--

[ overlapped conversations ]

- I hope that we don't

lose sight

of why the United States

is undertaking

this complex mission

in the first place.

- If James Webb is

fully funded, NASA will be

on track to launch the largest

and most powerful

space observatory ever built.

- The average person

would be like,

I couldn't, you know,

bear the pressure

and the anxiety and stuff,

and well,

what's the secret?

- Yeah, how do you handle

the pressure

of something like this

is an amazing question.

I will say the bonds

that we built through failure

and then through success,

of course, it was a family.

We argued.

- The position as the MOM,

Mission Operations Manager,

and, you know, it was--

the job is kind of

sometimes like being the mom

for everybody.

So, everybody in here,

you know, I almost, you know,

you get to the point

where you almost personally

putting them into the positions,

and you're- you're kind of

helping them grow into

what's going to happen.

You try to prepare them.

Um, you know, because

I would tell people

that it's-it's, um,

it was a very stressful job

as we got closer.

And you had to kind of work

with people to help them

deal with the stress

and stuff like that.

So it was, you know,

you tend to be a mom,

be a good friend.

And we all knew the risks.

- You know, we all knew

this wasn't a sure thing.

None of us left.

That's what I'm proud of.

[bicycle bell ringing]

- First and foremost,

we were ourselves

and we brought our strengths.

And we brought our-

our colorful parts

of ourselves.

The way we survived.

Ultimately, though,

if I could attribute it

to one thing, is,

the more the naysayers

came at us, the more we

as a team bound together.

If the naysayers thought

they were going to cancel

this program

by what they did,

they only made us stronger.

- In the early times,

up until now, practically,

the budget was not

what the project

actually required.

The budget was what people

could get for us.

And so, it didn't change

until Senator Mikulski

wrote a letter and said,

we're tired of hearing

from guys, uh,

when are you going to tell us

the real number?

She didn't say it in

those words exactly, but...

please stop embarrassing us.

So what's the real number?

- Two... One.

[ cheers and applause ]

Senator.

- Good morning, Goddard!

How are we today?

[ cheers and applause ]

I am so happy to be here

with you in the new year.

[ cheers and applause ]

- What led to us persisting

were people like

Senator Mikulski,

who was a huge advocate

for Webb

and for NASA Goddard,

and for science, in general.

The science community

was largely,

solidly, behind Webb

because they knew

the potential this thing had.

And how important it was.

- When we go into space,

we don't go to conquer.

We go to discover.

To discover new things

about the universe.

- We finish assembling it

and ship it off to NASA.

[ bell ringing ]

- We really don't know

much about it.

We know that it was 18 pieces.

We have pictures

of what it was like.

[ music ]

And, uh, that's about it.

Everything else

is sort of secretive.

We just take it

from point A to point B.

Each mirror's worth about 20,

and we have three

in the trailer,

so that's $60 million.

And, if we drove the truck

thinking constantly

that there was $60 million

in the trailer,

we'd probably just

drive ourselves crazy

and nervous wreck up here.

We just have to treat it

like everything else

and drive it and do our job.

Bye, guys!

That new space,

uh, mirror thing

that we're carryin'

in the trailer,

is going to be a little over

a million miles away,

and we've driven 1,000,003

on the last truck,

so it's going to be really far,

I can tell you.

You know, because

a million miles is a long time

behind the wheel of a truck.

So, I can say a million miles

far away is a long distance.

It's real, I've seen it.

I've seen crates

that the mirrors go in.

I've seen the drawing

of what the mirrors

are gonna look like

once it's put together.

You've got 18 of them

all hooked together.

So then you have to imagine

that they're folding

each one of these up,

and then they're opening all up

at the same time.

It's just like a flower.

It's going to be beautiful.

- I have a little,

a little trouble sleeping

knowing that these mirrors

are on a truck,

crossing the country.

These are the final three

mirror segments for

the James Webb Space Telescope.

So yeah, an incredible

milestone here today.

Exciting.

- We're getting up early.

- Absolutely worth

getting up early

and standing here in the cold.

Sure.

These mirrors will literally

see light

from the first galaxies

that were born in the universe.

So exciting stuff.

This is where we take

all the VIPs

that come through Goddard.

So you guys are definitely VIP.

So my-- so yeah,

this is the world's biggest

clean room of its type.

And if you look around

you'll see the familiar pods

that have been on your trek

over the last year.

- They're gorgeous.

- They are, they are,

they're beautiful.

And so this big yellow structure

here is where

we're going to assemble

the mirrors onto the back

plane of the telescope.

So it'll sit flat.

And then that robotic arm

right over there

will take all the mirrors

and place them

down on the back plane.

So yeah, we have to

keep everything clean

so that once it gets out to

the clean part of the space,

it's, you know,

it's already clean.

- It really is clean.

- Yeah. And I mean,

you see the guys in the--

the bunny suits down here.

So they have to stay protected

and that whole wall over here

is air filters.

- So I guess you can't

smoke in there.

[laughing]

- Definitely not in there.

No, no.

No chicken wings

in the clean room.

- No TVs.

- Everything's so clean.

- They're busy now.

- This is just remarkable.

- Yeah.

- So when we watch

this thing take off

and we know that it's in space.

- Oh, that sounds good.

- We were-we were there.

- Yeah.

- We saw it.

- It's a very tense scene

in here

when these two guys

from L3 Harris,

we're working over

the primary mirror

to take those covers off.

They've been practicing

for a couple of weeks

before this,

but this is a very

delicate procedure.

Any misstep could damage

the primary mirror.

Even if they have

a drop of sweat

that falls off onto the mirror,

that could set the mission back,

you know, six months,

or a year or so

'cause they're working

to clean that.

- At one point, they told us

they needed silence.

So a lot of us,

including myself,

just took a step back.

- And this is something

we really do not like to do

on Webb or on any telescope

is be above the optics,

having humans above the optics.

So, and it's something

that I've done

quite a few times on Webb.

The technician is

on a diving board,

which is attached to a forklift.

Is that basically a harness

platform attached to a forklift

out over the primary mirror.

And then physically removing

a hard cover

from each mirror segment.

The mirror segments are

within millimeters

of each other.

And so it's very difficult

to remove something

without scratching

or damaging the optical surface.

So it was a very

delicate operation.

And, really just showed

how careful we were gonna

need to be.

- It was wonderful.

It was wonderful

to see the instruments

coming to the clean room

and being aligned.

I think people know

once we add on these chambers,

it's a big effort

to keep them cold.

So we work 24 hours a day,

seven days a week,

for three months.

- I mean, I knew that Webb

was a really big deal

because they were just

putting the mirrors together

when I got here.

I mean, you can't not appreciate

how it looks because it's huge

and it's gold

and it's beautiful

and it's just so different

from anything else.

But one of my like,

important life memories

really was the first time

going in the clean room.

And there's something

really special

about putting on a bunny suit,

especially for going in

for work.

Like I never lost

my appreciation

of putting on a bunny suit,

opening those doors, and like,

seeing a space telescope

in a room.

- Generally, for the job,

we are documenting

what the engineers

and the technicians are doing,

and it's not typical

for producers

to come in overnight to sh**t

sort of glamor shots

of something.

So we got permission

from the project

to come in and give Webb

a really special treatment

with these shots.

We got a lighting crew,

cleaned a lot of gear

into the clean room,

and these really became

some of the iconic shots

of the telescope.

- I do think we got more

embedded into a team

than a lot of other

media groups have.

But yeah, you totally feel

a part of the team

when you are dressed

like the rest of the team,

and then you get to

know your team

from this lens.

You know, there's some people

that I only ever encountered

in the clean room

and was shocked

to see what they actually

looked like outside

of the clean room.

- So, Paul, go ahead

and take us on a tour of--

of the facility.

And I might note,

this is the same facility

that for many years

was used to develop

the servicing hardware

for the Hubble Space Telescope.

So it's moving on to

its next generation.

Paul, it's all yours.

- So there are

four instruments,

and the science instrument

module itself.

Webb has four state of the art

science instruments

and a guider.

The instruments consists

of a collection

of high resolution cameras

that give you

the pretty pictures

and spectrographs.

And the spectrographs

are the real scientific muscle

behind James Webb.

They're the ones

that can tease out the signals.

That tells you the physics

and the chemistry

of the objects

they're looking at.

- Behind every image

and spectra

that we are seeing from Webb,

our instrument has to work.

So NASA asked

the Canadian agency

to contribute

the fine guidance sensor.

That instrument is one

that looks for a particular

star in the sky,

what we call a guide star.

Once it finds it,

it keeps that position.

The intent is to keep

the observatory

as stable as possible.

If you want to take a picture

with your camera

and your camera is moving,

that picture is

not going to be good.

So we do the same on orbit.

And with this instrument

that I look after and--

and that's a complex operation.

I'm an astrophysicist,

but I work as

a systems engineer on

the James Webb Space Telescope,

in particular, looking after

two of the instruments,

one of the science instruments,

and the instrument

that guides the telescope

to let it take

all these pictures

that we're seeing.

- The system would not guide

without Beg.

She was the systems

person for the guider.

And it was such a complex

thing to do, guiding.

There are so many

technical details.

She had her arms around

all of it.

- I don't know how

we could have gotten through

all of the complicated way

to verify that Webb could point

and track properly.

That was a complicated thing

that proved ourselves

that that was all

going to work.

And Begonia was key to that.

- And what was great about her

was she had this personality,

which was so positive.

- This is where you have it.

- All right.

- I grew up in Spain.

I did my degree there,

then I did my Ph.D.

in astrophysics in the UK.

And then I think

for family reasons,

we ended up moving to Canada.

And in there

I moved to the private sector,

back to the space industry.

So I started actually in Canada

as the technical lead

for the two instruments

that were the contribution

to this telescope from Canada.

And of course,

all these things

are super careful.

You have each instrument

is built to meet

what they need to do on orbit.

Each of them has been tested

to show that they can survive

the worst part--

the launch with the vibration

and the noise, the acoustics.

We had three of these tests

on the chamber here at Goddard.

The first one had

two instruments,

the Canadian

and one of the European ones.

- Good morning.

I'm Chris Scolese,

director of the Goddard

Space Flight Center.

Welcome to the center.

I'm standing in building 29.

And behind me

is the clean room

where we're building

the James Webb Space Telescope.

And as you can see behind me

are the 18 mirrors

that formed the telescope.

Now, so that you can start

hearing about the telescope,

I want to introduce,

John Mather.

- Thank you, Chris.

Well, welcome to our

science party here today.

I think it's a wonderful day

to celebrate.

And I want to tell you

a little bit about what

we're doing it for.

Today, we're celebrating

the fact that

our telescope is finished

and we're about to prove

that it works.

So that's a pretty important

milestone for today.

- When you're launching

a rocket,

it's what we call random vibe.

It's just random shaking, right?

We did what we called

a signed vibe test,

which is essentially

vibrate the thing

at a given frequency

where we literally will shake

the full telescope

to simulate

the effects of launch,

and then change the frequency

slowly and watch

how your system behaves.

It's a much more stressing test,

but that means

that you have the possibility

of over testing certain parts.

- Certain parts resonate

at certain frequencies,

and when they start resonating

and you go three, four, five,

six, seven vibrations,

you start building up energy.

You start with a little shake

and then you go up

and you shake it

a little harder.

You shake it a little harder.

There was a loud popping sound,

and the sensors measured

something that was exceeding

the levels that we said.

This happens--

automatically shut down.

So we had an automatic shutdown.

And, I still very much remember

because it happened

on a Saturday

and I was actually home

during that particular test.

And I get a call,

there's going to be a telecon.

We just had

an automatic shutdown

and there was a loud

popping sound,

and the popping sound

gets your attention

because you're not supposed

to have a popping sound,

when you test flight hardware.

And I literally

drove into Goddard,

you know, I'm like listening

to the telecon and driving.

And we started discussing

whether that popping sound

could be potentially, you know,

something broke.

The telescope was

actually covered

in this plastic material,

and it's purged with dry gas,

but you can see through

the plastic material.

So I literally climbed

under the telescope

with the phone in my ear,

and I'm looking at it

and I said, you know,

I don't see anything

visibly broken,

like nothing came off.

And it was really difficult

to figure out.

But it turned out, you know,

we started running

a separate test

of some of the launch

restraint mechanisms

and the systems

that keep it locked up.

And we found out

what the problem was,

which was at a certain level,

these things

started to chatter.

And that chatter

sounded like the popping sound

that we heard.

We call that gapping.

We convinced ourselves

that we were going to be

okay for launch.

- There is so much at stake.

I mean,

I love the drama of it all,

but you have to understand

that people's careers are made

from something like this

and Webb was a mission

that was going to

be spectacular,

whether that was good or bad,

if it failed or was successful,

it, you know,

it was gonna always

make history.

- Everybody's pushing

to accomplish something

that's been outlined

as an idea,

the inspiration

of trying to discover something,

to build something

that's never been built before,

to discover something

that's never been known before.

It keeps us going.

And we are pleased

and privileged in our position

here at NASA

to be able to carry out this

on behalf of the country

and the world.

- This center of

curvature testing

was in the main

Goddard Clean Room,

the largest clean room

at Goddard,

and it's a fantastic facility.

But even that is at the limit

of what we needed for Webb.

- The telescope's

optical segment,

the part with the mirrors

and the science instruments

was built at NASA Goddard

in Greenbelt, Maryland,

then packed and flown

to the Johnson Space Center

in Houston, Texas.

??

- We needed

a very large chamber

to test Webb end to end,

optically, so we wound up

using JSC Chamber A,

which is the same vacuum chamber

that was used to test

the Apollo landers.

- It's been a long way,

but we're here.

- Chamber A was designed

to test the Apollo surface

and command modules,

so it had a rotating floor

and a top and side

solar simulators,

so they would simulate

the orbit of traveling

to the moon, where the, uh--

past the thermal control system

for the Apollo,

would rotate, kind of do

what they call

a barbecue role,

and practice its heating

and cooling.

And we did that with

actual astronauts.

It was before my time,

so when I say we did that,

I'm talking NASA, not--

not me, personally.

- It didn't really get used

very much.

I believe there was a--

a worry that it might be

mothballed or demoed,

and they wanted to

preserve it, and they made it

a national historic landmark.

- So Chamber A,

with its 40 foot diameter door,

is a pop culture icon.

It's been in music videos,

like, Aerosmith.

It's been in Armageddon

and Transformers 3.

- Still working on the preps

for Webb when we were trying

to clean up the high bay

for the movie Transformers 3.

And they had to get permission

from Webb to film that

so as not to interfere

with the schedule

of the telescope.

The Webb was the-- really,

is the most complicated thing

that they had done

since Apollo.

- The goal of the tests

of the telescope

in Chamber A really was

to make sure everything

was functioning properly

at the very cold temperatures,

and all the optical systems

worked properly

at cold temperatures.

It was the one time

we could test

the entire telescope

at the very cold temperatures.

The test was nominally

a three month test,

where we would cool

the telescope down to--

almost a month to cool

the telescope

to this minus 400 degree

Fahrenheit temperature.

And then a little over

a month, we'd stay at

these very cold temperatures

and it was the first time

we were gonna test

the full primary mirror

as a mirror.

We'd only tested

individual mirrors

at that point, so we had

to see the shapes

of all that matched.

It was the first time

we were gonna test

the telescope sort of

end to end.

Most of the cooling

that we do actually is done

with a very large

liquid nitrogen canister

inside of the vacuum chamber.

We run liquid nitrogen

through it, and that

cools us down to about

75 degrees above

absolute zero.

To get even colder, we'll have

a liquid helium system

inside of that, but most

of the cooling capacity comes

from the liquid nitrogen itself.

The sequence of the test

was it takes about 30 days

to cool everything down.

We had about 30 days

planned for testing,

and then about 30 days

to warm everything up.

- So when you are planning

for one of these tests

in a chamber, you always do

the contingency procedures.

If this goes wrong,

what will I do?

And I still remember

our first meeting

for Houston where we go

through all the things

we can do if the chamber

loses power,

if this instrument

doesn't work, whatever.

And then they say, well,

we also have to plan

for a hurricane.

And I remember being there

saying, "What?"

Are you kidding me?

- We started hearing about

a storm that was brewing,

a tropical storm.

And we all kind of gathered

in a room, and we started

talking about

contingency planning.

Because we had thought

a lot about potential

for storms and hurricanes.

And we did have

a five day supply

of liquid nitrogen in case

there was ever a big storm.

And then we got ready.

The storm got upgraded,

and upgraded, and upgraded

to category 3

and category 4.

- And so we were monitoring,

and I remember finishing

my shift, and hurricane--

it seemed that it was

going to come.

And we were like,

well, what should we do?

And they said, "We'll know.

So don't worry. Go home."

I remember going for dinner

with some colleagues.

We went to the restaurant

for dinner, and when we left,

the water-- you know,

we were paddling in water.

The water in the street

was as high as the sidewalk.

So that night,

the hurricane hit.

- And Saturday morning came,

and you know, the sky cleared

a little bit, and we said,

"Okay, it looks like we made it

through the worst of it."

Storm had kind of hit us.

And so, you know, we had

all these air mattresses,

and a couple people

stayed there Friday night.

But we actually started doing

testing again, and, you know,

Saturday afternoon we got

the very first measurement

of the primary mirror.

The very first time we saw

the entire primary mirror

was right after the hurricane

hit the next day.

But literally, within

an hour or two of getting

those first measurements,

some of us had actually

gone out to dinner

to kind of celebrate.

We made it through it,

and while we're there,

we get an email from

the meteorologist that

it looks like the storm

is kind of coming around

in a spiral, and we're gonna

get a much, much bigger hit

that Saturday night.

- Rockport, Texas feeling

the full force

of Hurricane Harvey

as the storm makes landing--

- We're measuring in feet.

- ...one of the most powerful

storms in United States--

- 130 miles an hour winds

and a treacherous storm--

- Search and rescue efforts

are underway.

- You know, I think we got

51 inches of rain that week,

but over 42 inches of it

was in one night.

And it was insane.

And it was so intense

that literally water started

coming through the roof.

So we started having

to cover equipment.

- I mean, you are there,

and you see the water

come in, and then you

see them come in

and setting everything up.

So we were just dealing

with it day to day, you know?

It was incredible to see

but at the same time,

we were just working

and trying to, uh,

accommodate all of this.

- And it turned out that

the storm lingered

for a full five days.

We had a five day supply

of liquid nitrogen,

but it was coming up

on five days.

And there was a point at which

we would have had to do

what's called

an emergency warmup,

and warm things up

even faster than planned

in a way that we had

never done before

in any of the rehearsals.

- Pieces would have broken.

You just can't have things

change temperature that quickly

with those kind of materials

and expect them to survive.

- If we couldn't get

some liquid nitrogen--

but the problem was,

the supplier of

the liquid nitrogen

was underwater.

- It was-- a state

of emergency was declared,

and so getting our shipments

of liquid nitrogen was

not the priority of the state,

and we had to, uh,

make it happen.

- The center did a great job

of using our center resources

to grab liquid nitrogen

from every other point

on the center and redumping it

into our tanks.

- And our teams,

many of them slept

in the control room.

Hurricane Harvey was--

was one of those times where

the team gave up everything

for the protection

of the telescope.

- We were literally at

the very final day,

I remember, you know,

coming in really early

in the morning, and after

several hours, we finally

got the president

of the division that sort of

ran the liquid nitrogen,

and they were able

to find a driver,

and find a truck,

and make a couple trucks

of supply.

And finally, they came

that night, or--

The next morning, I think,

we would have had to do

an emergency warmup,

and, uh, crossed our fingers

a little bit.

But they came, and I remember,

because we had a video camera

of the place where the trucks

would pull up.

And when we saw the trucks,

the entire control room

broke into applause.

- I was one of

the first people

in the chamber after.

When we opened it up,

it was actually on my birthday.

And it was one of the most

powerful experiences of my time

working on Webb.

The chamber is amazing

with the door shut.

It's all black.

It's designed to be

not reflective for light,

and so we went in

with flashlights

to do this inspection,

and it's-it's similar

to spelunking.

It's like going into a cave

that has a space telescope

in it.

It is absolutely

the coolest thing.

We need to climb up

on scaffolding to get

to see the primary mirror.

And so, uh, we went

into the chamber and climbed up

on the scaffolding

to take a look,

and it was brilliant

to see the gold mirrors

against the black background

in this chamber.

Well, when I got past

the beauty of seeing

the gold mirrors again,

they were absolutely filthy.

So this was, um--

- Why was that?

- That was because

the fallout from the chamber,

so during cryogenic testing,

all of the particulate

and everything that was--

had collected inside the chamber

for the last 50 years

fell onto the exposed

[indistinct]

gold primary mirror segments.

And so they were in

pretty bad shape

after the cryo testing.

- A decision was made

to clean the mirrors,

and when you look at

multi-million dollar

baryllium-- gold coated

baryllium mirrors,

you're not using squeegee

and some Windex.

- So we rotated it

so the gold primary mirror

was cupped down.

The big fear is that,

especially on a coated optic,

that through cleaning it

we're going to

damage the coding,

or scratch the mirror,

or put some other substance

on the mirror

from what we're using to clean.

- Larkin and his group

from Ball went in

in a prone position with

a very special kind of brush,

an IPA, where they cleaned

all of the-- the primary

and the secondary mirror

with tiny little brushstrokes.

Maybe each stroke was

a half an inch to an inch.

And so it was incredibly

detailed work.

Um, it took a while.

- I was within inches

of the telescope

for 10 days, and being under

that gold coated

primary mirror area

is something to get--

to put the energy

into cleaning that mirror

and knowing that it's going

to be receiving photons

from stars and it's going

to be helping to reveal

the universe and I get to

spend time getting it

prepared for that.

Cleaning it and putting it

in the best configuration

and the best condition it can be

for what it's gonna do

in the future.

- The other tough things

when it comes to deployments

are obviously the big,

flexible, floppity things

like the sun shield.

Of all the deployments,

that's the one that really

is the toughest for many of us.

Because the mirror

is just an example.

They are big.

They have to work.

But they're also very rigid

and we have a lot of experience

with how to move

big rigid things

and latch them in orbit.

But the floppity things,

the flexible things

like membranes, making sure

they go where you want,

and more importantly

they don't go

where you don't want them to go,

that's tough.

- How do I feel about

the sun shield design.

Boy, um, uh, so here's

the thing.

I personally think that

the sun shield design

is very complicated.

There are a lot of pulleys,

and cables, and motors,

and drives.

On the other hand if you

ask me, hey, go simplify

the sun shield design,

I would not know where

to begin.

It's-it's-- I think,

complicated by necessity.

It's huge, and it has

to be lightweight,

and it has to deploy,

and it has to

deploy positively.

We have to have tension on it.

It can't be loose or floppy.

It has to stow

and get folded.

You bring in all

of these constraints,

and you think about design

as a space, right?

You know, certain things

cut off a giant portion

of that space, and you bring in

all these constraints,

you're left with

a relatively narrow box

in which you can design.

And, you know, because

it exists, it's hard to--

to imagine it being

any other way.

It's like your life, right?

You grew up the way you are,

and-and you are who you are

because of the things

that shape your existence.

And so it's hard to say

if-if you had a do-over

if you'd be any different.

- The sun shield is the key

to the entire Webb observatory.

You know, it's the thing

that blocks out the heat

from the sun, the Earth,

and the moon from

Webb's optics and instruments,

allowing them to get down to

those super cold temperatures

necessary for them

to operate.

- There is not a book.

There's no design standards.

The sun shield is--

is so novel that we can't

find anything like that

that's been flown

that has these crazy things

it needs to do.

- The sun shield turned out

to be, I think, maybe

a bigger challenge

than some people thought,

because, you know,

although there were people

experienced at deploying

large things that have

floppy elements to them,

it's still a hard problem,

and this was

a unique sun shield.

- And so we wanted to test out

things like, you know,

how do we actually

just handle this material.

It's very thin.

There's five layers,

and the thinnest layer

is one mil, which is

one thousandth of an inch.

So, you know, much thinner

than your hair.

We wanted to make sure

we could just handle it

without ripping it.

If you ever try to fold origami,

you know that paper can really

only be folded a few times.

It makes creases, there's lines.

- The big thing with

the sunshield early on

was how do we support it

during launch?

You know, you--

it-it-it's floppy, you know.

You got these five things

that all fold up.

You still have to hold it down

for launch, or it'll sag.

It'll move around

and tear itself up.

So you have to give it support.

The launch environment's

rather violent.

- To hold the membrane down

to the structure,

you have to hold it down

with some release devices.

And there's 107 of them.

- You can't even imagine

the number of holes that had

to be precisely located

in these membranes.

And then when you fold it

all up, the--

all these holes have to line up.

Oh, by the way,

when it's deployed,

these-these holes can't be

such that sunshine

can get through them lined up.

So it's an incredibly

complex problem geometrically.

- Webb is massive.

It is about three stories high

and about the size

of a tennis court.

Just try to imagine

Roger Federer and Rafa

running back and forth

on their paths of our telescope.

Just, uh, picture that

and just imagine how

large this is and what

a hard job that is.

- So NEA is

a Non expl*sive Actuator.

So these are the types

of release mechanisms

that we use on Webb.

The majority of

our release mechanisms were

all on the sunshield.

- And we're going to skewer it.

And we're going to pin it

to this big structure.

And then when we get on orbit,

we'll retract those pins

and everything will be good.

- And-And I-I remember

a meeting where we were like,

yeah, it sounds like

a really bad idea.

And I was actually out there

doing my rotation one time

when the head of

integration test for-for

Northrop was gonna take me

in the clean room

to do an inspection.

We're walking into

the clean room, he says,

you know, I have to--

I have to warn you,

there-there might be a little

bit of a hubbub in there.

And I said, why is that?

And he said, well, they-they

found some screws and washers

on the ground

after this last test.

- Every single one of

those fasteners,

a thousand of them.

When the screw goes through

the end of the nut,

it leaves a sharp edge.

That sharp edge could catch

a cable or scratch

a 1,000th of an inch

thick membrane,

and punch a hole in it that can

lead to an end of a mission.

- You know, as we

really dug into the issue,

you know, it is-- it was--

it was a bit of

a subtle interface thing.

And one of the reasons

you test things is

to uncover these issues.

But when you're

a really large sunshield

with a lot of screws and nuts

and washers, you know,

one small thing can multiply,

and then it gets multiplied.

You know, we were-we were like

in a goldfish tank, you know.

the entire planet would read

about it in, you know--

via newspapers,

and you just knew that one

was gonna-was gonna be

that kind of issue

from the beginning.

And so that--

I think that created

a lot of stress for all of us.

And that was a very big hit.

Took about 11 month hit

on our schedule.

- Our architecture, especially

in those deployments,

had, what, 344 single point

failures, right?

If you're going to have

344 single point failures

and they're all dependent

on the last reset

on the last installation,

you have to have an environment

of absolute openness

and honesty.

And the fear that comes

from the-the politics

and that kind of stuff

is your chief enemy to that.

- I mean, it's crushing, right?

The team is now sunk.

It's out there in the news.

We're getting less,

and we now know

we're not going to make

our launch date again.

- Mr. Bridenstine, uh,

welcome back.

- Thank you.

- You know, how much has

changed since 1996?

- Oh, my gosh--

- When-when this was first

put out there at $500 million.

Can you even talk about

how much cosmology has changed?

- Uh, it's-it's

a wonderful question.

And when you think of

the universe at large,

NASA is learning new things

every single day,

how the universe is expanding

and not just expanding,

but expanding at

an ever increasing rate.

It's actually accelerating.

And-and what is causing that?

And can James Webb help us

understand that, you know,

at the edge of the universe,

there are galaxies, in essence,

disappearing because

they're accelerating faster

than the speed of light.

- Wow.

- So those galaxies,

the light from them,

if they're faster

than the speed of light,

that light can't get

back to Earth, which means

there's a whole lot

of things we don't understand

about the physics, astrophysics

that this particular spacecraft

is going to help us learn.

Going back to the very beginning

of Cosmic Dawn,

we're gonna learn how did

the very first galaxies form?

What did that first light

look like?

- I really want to thank you

for the comprehensiveness

of that answer, because

the world in science itself

is changing in ways

that impact a project

that we have completely

different expectations for

in 2018.

- There's a whole host

of capabilities that

we can't even predict yet

until it's on orbit,

and we're doing everything

we can to get there.

- Mr. Chairman, I just wish

we had a head of NASA that

was excited about this project.

- Yeah.

- Now when you ask

your first question,

I could see that answer

going on for a couple of hours,

but I thought it was

a good answer.

- Outside a family and,

you know, many other things,

it's hard to imagine

a prouder day in my life

watching him.

He got grilled,

and got challenged

and gave honest answers

and sat there

and-and went through that

and knew he-- you know,

he had to take it.

And in the end said,

but we're gonna get this right.

- And for the first time,

we are on the homestretch.

[ music ]

- 2020 comes around.

And COVID hits.

And at the time, it was like,

you gotta be kidding me.

- When people ask me

what the biggest challenge

on Webb was,

I almost always say COVID.

Now we had technical issues

and technical challenges,

but people's health

weren't being affected.

Well-- I take that--

you know, mental health

maybe got an affected,

but direct threats

to your health

did not come from that.

This was a direct threat

to our team

and to-- the most valuable

resource of our team

was the people.

Not money, not schedule,

nothing, it was the people.

- Meanwhile, we're already

wearing masks in the highbay.

We were-we were

way in advance of that, right?

Because if you look at

all the old shots of Webb,

oh, look at them wear a mask.

Was COVID back in 2011?

Like, no, we wore masks to keep

the mirrors clean, right?

So we already had

mask practice down,

and we said let's keep going.

So we kept a core team.

That core team came in

heroically.

Never stopped.

And the team who never stopped,

we all owe an incredible

debt of gratitude for

because I tell you,

if we had stopped,

I don't know what it

would've taken to restart.

- There was just one last

sunshield deployment test

before Webb was packed up

and sent to French Guiana.

- This was gonna be

the last time Webb

was deployed ever

on the planet.

And this was the culmination

of the effort

of thousands of people

around the world.

So I wanted to do

something spectacular for this.

And we got a gyro stabilized

camera system,

and we mounted it underneath

one of those lifts

that they use in the clean room.

And this lift can go up

about 65 feet.

And I believe during that time,

we captured some of

the most amazing images

of the telescope

in its final deployed state.

- The last step as

we were going through

our deployments was removing

that lens cap

right before the sunshield

was folded up.

The instruments are

very sensitive to light

that are designed

to be extremely sensitive,

so they can sense

far off faint stars.

And so lights from

the clean room

could potentially damage

these instruments.

And so we had kept

this cover in place

not only for contamination

to keep any sort of debris

or-or, uh, small particulate

out of the micro shutters,

but also to optically protect

the instruments from, uh, light

that could potentially damage

the sensors.

This lens cap was removed

at the last possible moment

while we were stowing

the-the fore sunshield,

and I was the one to do that.

[ indistinct chatter]

- Yeah, you're all set.

- Going up.

- Going up.

- I'm a very even keel person,

and-and, uh, am able to perform

these tasks in a really

focused and relaxed way

without letting my emotion

be a part of it.

And this one got me.

This one was different.

It was the last time

that I would be

in front of the mirrors

in that way.

It was the last time

that I would see the--

inside the aft optics assembly,

see that tertiary mirror

and the fine steering mirror

and the instruments.

And so removing this cover,

uh, it was-it was

actually a pretty emotional

moment for me.

[ music ]

I was able to keep it together

and not drip tears anywhere.

And get the cover off perfectly,

and get Webb ready to go.

But it was

a very emotionally impactful

moment for me,

uh, saying goodbye

to that part of Webb.

- What's the one aspect

of the design that you lose

the most sleep over?

- Ah, good question.

I don't lose sleep over this.

I did that already.

I think what worries

most people the most

is that deployment.

It's really hard to prove

that they will do

the same thing next time

that it did last time.

With the deployment,

you fold it back up

one last time,

and then you push the button

one last time

and it's gotta be the same.

So this is-this is tricky

and the deployments

cannot possibly be tested

in exactly the same condition

they will see in space.

Zero gravity, cold vacuum.

We don't got that here.

That's what I think most people

worry about the most.

- And the expectation

is probably the hardest thing,

I would say.

The-the weight of, uh,

knowing that this has

to go right the first time

and the only time, and there is

really no room for error.

Carrying that around for

however long we've all been

on the program, um,

was-was a thing.

My boss, Jim, uh, used to say

that we're like deep sea fish,

under sort of constant pressure.

And that, uh,

once Webb was launched,

we wouldn't really know

what to do with ourselves

because all the pressure

would be off.

- Webb is by far the largest

piece of flight hardware

that we've moved.

The transporter is

the largest transporter

that I know of in history

to come out of

Goddard Space Flight Center.

And essentially what OSTTARS

is, is a mobile clean room

moving JWST from one location

to the other

while it's still inside

of a clean room environment.

- And so it was goodbye

for the entire team

that had been a part

of the observatory,

and spacecraft, integration,

and everything for 20 years

at that point.

- There was nothing easy

about Webb at all.

I don't care what aspect

of the mission you looked at.

So moving around

that huge behemoth

of a telescope became

extraordinarily challenging.

- The 405 is just something

that is a big part

of the heart of L.A.

and that whole community,

and so it's really neat

that we got to send it

right through the heart of L.A.

and off to the sea in that way,

and be a part of that.

[ music ]

- It's going four times

farther away

than the moon over there,

and it's going to be there

for eternity.

[ music ]

[ cheering ]

- Goodbye!

- Goodbye! [ indistinct ].

- Whoo-ee!

- We're shipping

the James Webb Space Telescope

to its launch site

in French Guiana.

It just left port in

uh, the Naval Weapons Center,

Seal Beach.

And after 25 years

of development,

it's headed for its launch site

and its final destination,

space.

- One of the interesting parts

about when we departed

is security.

How did we make sure

that we didn't encounter

any sort of pirates,

or cause any disruption

to our shipment?

In the maritime industry,

you can track ships

everywhere they go.

As we are departing

from Seal Beach,

there-there were posts

on the internet,

because there is a--

a vibrant community of people

that are very interested

in what's happening with JWST.

And so on-on Reddit, actually,

there was one particular person

that was really good

at tracking the ship,

and he was--

he was giving a great log

to the general public

of where the ship was going.

I was actually able

to reach out to him,

explain to him, you know,

it would be great of him to--

to maybe just add

a little bit of vagueness

to where the ship

was actually going,

the direction,

just a little bit less detail.

And surprisingly,

he was great about it.

You know, he-he went about

posting and-and saying that--

got a little bit more

generic with the locations.

- Well, Kourou is actually

a good place for a launch site,

very close to the equator,

and that helps you

getting an extra spin

when you launch.

- It was a bubble

that we were there,

mostly hidden from the pandemic,

able to work

and just focus on-on Webb

and getting it ready

for launch.

- The weather

is pretty volatile.

I mean, you're on--

you're in a tropical

environment,

even in December.

In fact, it caused one

launch delay of a few days.

Under the umbrella

of that launch delay,

no pun intended,

the technical folks

preparing Webb for rollout,

had a bit of extra time

to be able to attend

to last minute preparations.

- It was pouring.

I got soaked more than I had

any other time in Kourou,

standing out there

with the team,

watching it rolling out

to the launch.

And it was--

it was an absolute party

in the rain.

- We weren't going any place

until Webb was off the ground

safely on its way.

So it's not like

we had a a plane to catch

or a train to catch, right?

We were a c*ptive audience.

- A really neat thing happened

because of the way

that launch had been delayed,

and it ended up

being on Christmas Day.

- So when the clock hit 12,

you know, it was-it was--

it was a privilege of mine

to wish everybody

a happy holiday

and to thank them

and then mention to them

that their families were--

you know, history had put them

in that place at that time

for a reason, you know.

And I didn't go into it,

but it was like, you know,

I kept thinking about

the Apollo 8 launch,

you know, Christmas Eve,

you know, reading about--

from the book of Genesis--

you know, it's famous, right?

- Just now broaching

the lunar sunrise.

And for all the people

back on Earth,

the crew of Apollo 8

have a message that

we would like to send to you.

In the beginning

God created the heaven

and the earth.

And the earth was

without form and void,

and darkness was upon

the face of the deep.

And the spirit of God moved

upon the face of the waters.

And God said,

let there be light,

and there was light.

- The reading about,

you know, the first light.

And here we are launching this--

this incredible machine

that's intended to pick up

that first light.

[ choir singing faintly ]

- When the Webb telescope

was launched,

I was just sitting on the sofa

with my wife,

because COVID was happening.

So everybody stayed home.

We didn't have

any launch parties.

Okay, well, that's how it goes.

People thought, well,

surely you must be

on the edge of your chair,

because you've been

working on this forever,

and it could go wrong.

That's not how I felt.

I felt, of course

it's going to work.

We've done everything

we should do.

- I haven't yet

thought a lot about

what is the proper Zen mode

to get into for launch day.

By that point,

the die is already cast, right?

Either we built it correctly

and it's going to work,

or we're going to find

surprises on orbit.

But it's time to go find out.

- It's all looking very good

here at the spaceport

for a Christmas Day launch.

Operations running smoothly,

the countdown

ticking over nicely.

All the systems are green

and we are go for launch.

We're looking at

launch pad number three,

the James Webb Space Telescope,

inside the very top

of the rocket in first class

with its seat belt on.

I'm in the mission

control center

here at the spaceport,

the nerve center of operations.

We're about ten kilometers

from that pad.

And behind me you can see,

it's a laser focus

here in the control center

with the mission control centers

all on console there

as we get closer to launch.

- And let's go to black.

Take it away, Robert.

It's all yours.

- Merry Christmas

from the Guiana Space Center

in Kourou, French Guiana.

- You know, they do

Ariane 5 launches frequently

out of French Guiana.

But there was something

different about this one.

There was something

in the air that said

this has a different aura,

this has a different importance.

This one had

a different flavor to it,

and you knew

you were in the middle

of something big.

- You get

the two minute warning,

everyone goes out

onto these balconies.

- And you are watching

a number of people,

VIPs and invited guests

moving out to

the observation platform

that is right next to

the Jupiter Control Center,

as we stand by

for the one minute call

from Jean-Luc Voyer.

[speaking French ]

- Thumbs up from

Jean-Luc Voyer.

All systems are go.

We're inside a minute now.

T minus 50 seconds and counting.

- And you wait,

and you can hear

a little speaker

with Rob's commentary.

- Turbo pumps will come up

to flight speed

in seven seconds,

and the command

will be issued to ignite

the solid rocket boosters.

The James Webb Space Telescope

will be on its way.

- And then he starts

counting down

- T-minus 30 seconds

and counting.

- By the time he got to eight,

my throat was just closing.

- Standing by

for terminal count.

[speaking French ]

[ counting down in French ]

[ cheering ]

- Holy sh--

- Because we were

a few miles out,

you see it go.

And it's going up

and up and up and up.

You don't hear it

for at least 45 seconds

to a minute.

You know, all of my hopes

and dreams and wishes and--

and, frankly, a piece of me

launched at that time.

And you see it go.

And it's such a strange thing

to only hear it,

and it just rumbles.

- And liftoff.

[speaking French ]

- Decollage, lift off

from a tropical rainforest

to the edge of time itself.

James Webb begins

a voyage back to

the birth of the universe.

It's a really specific,

odd rumble that a rocket has.

leaving the atmosphere

that also keeps it

special in your memory,

because it's something

that is very different

than sounds that you hear

any time else.

- Just over a minute from now,

springs will gently

push Webb away

from the upper stage

of the Ariane 5.

- There's this loop

running in your brain

where you're like,

did that just really happen?

You know?

Did we just really take off

after multiple

decades of this?

Did we just really

leave the Earth.

- ...Webb Space Telescope.

Go Webb!

[ cheers and applause ]

- Ironically enough,

as we marvel on this view

from the upper stage camera,

this will be humanity's

last view of the James Webb

Space Telescope

as it moves to its workplace

about a million miles

away from Earth.

- The launch team is done.

Now all the--

all the attention turns

to the operation centers.

- For those of you

who are just joining us,

we are looking at

live coverage of the deployment

of the secondary mirror

for the James Webb

Space Telescope.

You're looking at

an animation that includes

real time telemetry,

real time data

from the spacecraft

as to the configuration...

- We used to make jokes.

It was like, you know, hey,

you know, Merry Christmas.

Look what we got.

We got a telescope.

Oh, some assembly required.

Yeah, it was some assembly.

We start getting

our deployment started,

and Webb--

Webb was performing

beautifully.

- You're seeing an animation,

but this isn't just any--

you know, any random animation.

This is actually based

on real data.

- That script looks good.

You're go to execute.

- Fire executing.

- Command will fire

OTELRM group five.

[ indistinct ]

you are go to fire.

- Copy, go to fire.

- It's not just

pushing buttons.

There's a lot of real time

information that comes in.

And you've got to be able

to deal with it.

You've got to simulate it,

figure out what to do

and make an action.

- I'm getting more

and more excited.

My heart is starting

to beat faster and faster.

There's-- for me

there's a tremendous

amount of joy.

I have this-this smile,

like, on my face

from ear to ear right now.

- Again, we had

rehearsed everything

and practiced it

a zillion times,

but now you're up there.

You only got one chance

to get it right.

- Without this mirror

in its right position,

we do not get light

into the telescope.

- This motor move

has completed successfully

and [ indistinct ] has confirmed

we are go to proceed

with the latch two safe.

- Roger, executing.

- We are now at a point

where we're about 600,000

miles from Earth,

and we actually have

a telescope.

Congratulations

to everybody.

[ cheers and applause ]

- Well, I'm thrilled to see

that it finally works,

because when we started off,

we got a lot of people

laughing at us that

that was impossibly difficult.

And now it's done.

- Hey, John. How are you doing?

[ indistinct chatter]

- Hey, John. Welcome.

- Good morning, good morning.

When we built the equipment,

we drew our requirements up,

they were all numbers.

Nobody tells you

what that means

in terms of the beauty

of the universe.

Years and years ago,

people ask med, John,

are the pictures

going to be beautiful?

And I said, yes,

but I didn't know

what they'd be like.

So it was an act of faith,

but it was a good act of faith.

- Whatever's out there,

we're going to see it.

And we haven't cranked

this sucker up to 11,

but we're going to.

- When things got cold enough,

the cameras worked.

I saw those first images.

I was like, yeah,

this is pretty cool.

- We're really, you know,

standing on the backs

of thousands of people

over many,

many different disciplines

to make this happen.

- The image came back.

It was a beautiful center image

of the star with six

radiating rays of light.

And there's supposed to be

nothing behind it, nothing.

What we saw were--

turned out to be

250-odd galaxies that have

never been seen before

in this image that supposedly

had nothing in it.

- There are galaxies

everywhere. We were--

People said we've been

photobombed by galaxies.

So well, that's a pretty big

thrill for everybody.

[ cheers ]

- I didn't know I was coming

to a pep rally today.

But-but that's all the better.

And you've got a-a lot

to be rallying for.

This morning,

folks across this planet

are gonna see the images

captured by this telescope,

this telescope,

because of infrared,

is going to be able to penetrate

through the dust clouds.

You're gonna see

the formation of stars.

You're gonna see

devouring black holes.

- Here we go.

- We're gonna-- let's do it.

- Okay, we got

the whole world watching.

Are you ready to put

the first image up?

- Oh, let's do it. Let's do it.

- We are ready to see

Webb's first image

of a star dying.

A planetary nebula called

the Southern Ring.

[ gasps ]

- Wow.

[applause ]

[ music ]

- The art that is out there

in the sky,

revealed for the first time.

We're thinking of the team,

and we're thanking them.

John, thanks to you.

Thanks to all of you.

[ music ]

- I think, uh, people

brought some champagne,

so that's higher priority.

- You're going to see things

that this species

has never seen.

And you've done it.

Tell everybody this was

an important day

in the history of humanity.

Because we will never look back.

You can never undiscover.

You can never unobserve things.

So congratulations

to the entire team.

You all made history.

Be proud.

Thank you.

- And, uh, you know,

I'm a scientist,

so, uh, I've been working

on this project for 20 years,

so we should expect what we saw.

But no, uh, several times

in the last six months,

I nearly break my jaw

of what I saw.

These incredible images.

- Success is binary.

You either win or you don't.

So we built something

that was so ambitious.

If it didn't work at all,

we would be terrified.

But if it did work,

we would be guaranteed of

tremendous discoveries.

I think my favorite image

is the picture

of a cloud of galaxies

with a very, very bright one

in the center.

- A hundred years ago,

we thought there was

only one galaxy.

Now the number is unlimited.

And that light that

you are seeing

on one of those little specks

has been traveling

for over 13 billion years.

- Everywhere we look at

is gonna be

a scientific discovery.

Believe that.

- Oh, no, I agree.

- Every image is essentially

a Hubble Deep Field.

- Yeah.

- Is that incredible, or what?

- It's something.

- This stunning vista

of the cosmic cliffs

of the Carina Nebula

reveals new details about

this vast stellar nursery.

Today, for the first time,

we're seeing brand new stars

that were previously

completely hidden from our view.

- I present to you

Maisie's Galaxy, which is

named after my daughter,

as we both discovered it

on her ninth birthday,

and she had been asking me

for months to name

a galaxy after her.

I would like to leave you

with one of my favorite images.

- It's called Stephan's Quintet

and it's wondrous.

[ gasps ]

[applause ]

- The perspective of what

we're going to find out.

What do you tell

a seven-year-old when she says,

I get what the Curiosity thing

is doing, but what's JWSgonna do, Dad?

- Ah, okay.

Uh, she's got a good question.

What we're actually trying

to find out

is the entire history

of the universe

from then 'til now,

from the beginning 'til now,

including the things

that made galaxies and stars

and planets and Earth

and, uh, made it possible

for us to live on

our particular little Earth.

So, um, that's why

I'm interested.

I asked my dad that question,

sort of like that,

and I said, you know,

where did we come from?

I was about six or seven

or something.

Nobody knew.

We knew a little bit,

but we certainly couldn't

tell you the whole story.

- You know, we can get as geeky

and as-as in the details

as you want,

but when you step back

for a minute, it really is

about our place in the universe.

And that's something

that resonates with people

and that they hit people

in an artistic

and a spiritual way.

- I'm reaching out to you

from London.

- My father was diagnosed

last year with

stage four cancer.

- And unfortunately,

the prognosis means he doesn't

have a great deal of time

left with us.

- From as early as I can

remember, my father has been out

burning the midnight oil,

looking at the stars

through his telescope.

- And often driving into

the mountain overnight,

setting up to take pictures

and even submitting photos

of what he found in magazines.

- When I was a kid,

I remember him upgrading

his telescope every few years

after saving away.

- He is so passionate

about the work you do,

and the recent advancements

of the JWST has been

very exciting for him.

- I'm really pleased

he's still here to follow along

with all the amazing innovation

you and your team

are doing at the moment.

- He keeps busy

keeping up with the news

around your advancements.

Ah, that's really cool.

- For me, these letters

express how I feel.

These letters are about

the wonder that I feel

looking at the universe,

the wonder that I feel

looking at our team

that made this observations

and tool possible.

Uh, astonishment at what

we're able to discover.

Uh, it's kind of

beyond words to describe

how satisfying and fulfilling

and rewarding it is

after reading things like this.

I mean... uh, yeah.

It's pretty hard to describe.

It really makes you feel good

about what you do.

And to make a mark

for-for good

and for positive things

in the world

is pretty, pretty cool,

pretty special.

- That's actually why

I do love space.

And I think that other people

love space because

it does give you

that sense of awe,

and like feeling

one with the universe.

Um...

so I'm glad it helped someone.

- Look, there aren't

many things these days

that almost everyone

on planet Earth

can feel inspired about,

but I feel like

the images from Webb

are one of those things.

They bring in

a sense of wonder.

It's kind of like

when you're a little kid

and you look up

at the night sky.

We need some wonder

in our world.

It's just a feeling of

immense joy and achievement.

And I feel happy

for humanity a little bit.

Yeah.

- So I'm lucky enough

that I get to continue

telling the story about what

NASA's doing for its next

big flagship missions.

- There are plenty of

other mysteries of science,

but we are seeing,

with our own eyes,

with the aid of telescopes,

the process unfolding.

So what more could you

hope for from astronomy?

- One of the core obligations

we have is oversight,

and we quite often

hear in government

how things don't work.

I just want to say

thank you for exceeding

our expectations,

and let's continue on with that.

I yield back.

- So, congratulations

to everyone, uh,

for making it happen.

And we now are counting

on continued brilliance

for the next half a century,

at least.

Thank you for proving

it's possible.

Looking back to childhood,

we had no idea...

no one had any idea

what the future would bring

in terms of space exploration,

new technology, electronics.

It was all new.

We had no idea that computers

would ever be so powerful,

or so common.

Marvels are yet to occur,

and we are still

growing rapidly

in our capabilities.

So astronomers have already

had a book that we outlined

what we'd like to do

for the next many decades.

I think it'll take us a century

before we run out of that book.

And then,

from what we learn

in the next decades,

we'll have more miracles

to produce,

more miracles to ask for.

So, much as possible.

And this is

a very exciting time

to be an astronomer.

- I get to see things

that are way beyond Earth

because of where I work.

- That will surely surprise us

in some way that

I can't tell you.

- It's an exciting moment.

This thing's been

a long time in the making.

- And once we get it out there,

we got to robotically

put it back together.

That's never been done before.

- A pride in humanity

that when we want to,

we can do that.

- We're building this telescope

really to answer

fundamental questions

that we have.

It's detecting the building

blocks of life on exoplanets.

- That then gets sent

into the telescope.

- All of these galaxies

in the background photobomb

the pictures, right?

- I feel like we're discovering

new parts of the universe.

- It's going to, uh,

inspire us as people.

We're going to solve a problem

we didn't know how to solve,

because we're gonna learn

something that we didn't know

until this big eyeball

in the sky...

opened up and saw it.

I don't know who else

gets to say that.

- The James Webb

Space Telescope

is the most ambitious

and complex space

science mission

humanity's ever undertaken.

- No one's ever done

anything like this before,

but the science

will be worth the wait.

- Roger all, Discovery.

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- Researchers were astonished

to see the dust cloud

annihilated when

the massive stars exploded.

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- Now Webb takes us even deeper

into the infrared universe.

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