by Garth Meyer
Eleven years ago, in a fifth-grade classroom in Redondo Beach, a teacher told students about the Hubble telescope. A girl raised her hand.
“My dad is building the next one,” she said.
“What? That can’t be right,” the teacher replied.
“Yes, he is.”
“Can I call him?”
The girl is now a senior at UCLA. Her father is Northrop Grumman Webb telescope program manager Scott Willoughby, who has worked on the project for the past 12 years.
Willoughby flew to French Guiana earlier this month to oversee his team which has been on site since September. Mission dress rehearsal was Wednesday.
Willoughby, who has spoken to Rotary Clubs in the Beach Cities, and more classrooms than just his two daughters’, missed the first trip to the launch site in October because he slipped and broke a bone in his foot.
His podiatrist told him he had to miss the coming work trip.
Then the doctor learned what the trip was for.
“Oh yes, the Webb telescope, my wife has a friend who works at Northrop Grumman, and my wife and kids and I, we just went to see it,” he said. “I’m going to make sure you make it there (for the next trip).”
And so it went, the Webb a different kind of project for workers like Willoughby, who spent the first 20 years of his career on military communications systems.
“It’s very public. Folks don’t need a STEM degree to look up in the sky,” Willoughby said. “For Webb, it’s a journey that’s been very much shared. The results of Webb go to the public.”
Like Willoughby’s podiatrist, the public has been able to watch the Webb being built, through an observation window at Space Park on Aviation Boulevard.
“I come in on Mondays, and these visitors log books would be filled,” Willoughby said. ER
