Webb telescope perfect, Earth unveiling not so much
by Garth Meyer
Northrop Grumman workers gathered in an auditorium at Space Park Tuesday morning, July 12, to see the first images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which Redondo Beach engineers largely designed and built.
“It’s relationships that made the James Webb Space Telescope,” said Scott Willoughby, Northrop Grumman’s Webb program manager, from flight control in Baltimore, as the NASA production jumped to different locations. “We were perfect.”
Audiovisual matters on Earth remained an inexact science.
A few glitches occurred.
An on-site host at Northrop Grumman told the gathered to be prepared, and when called on by the NASA TV host for a live feed, to stand up and cheer.
The broadcast soon went to a report from a team that processed the images about to be revealed, “at the pixel level,” putting colors to heat. The Webb’s infrared camera is not visual, but a depictor of temperatures. A team of 30 people spent weeks rendering the images from raw telescope data.
The live TV feed began to move around the world: India, Israel, Canada. The host then mentioned “the team that built the Webb” and the Redondo Beach audience stood up.
But the feed cut to Baltimore.
The Northrop Grumman workers laughed, and sat back down.
Then came Webb’s first image; a planetary nebula caused by a dying star.
More live feeds followed, and finally on screen: Northrop Grumman workers in Redondo Beach.
The auditorium stood and cheered. And stayed standing and cheering.
The NASA host moved on, but the feed lingered on Redondo Beach.
Next was an image of “Stephan’s Quintet” — five galaxies, 290 million light years away.
The light from the cluster took that long to reach the telescope, which orbits a million miles from Earth.
(For reference, light takes five seconds to get from the Earth to the Webb).
Northrop Grumman workers watch the revealing of the James Webb Telescope’s first images July 12 at Space Park. Photo by Garth Meyer
Then, the final image was shown: orange, cosmic cliffs, a “stellar nursery,” as described by a NASA astronomer, 7,600 light years away.
The orange ridge was made of gas and dust. Dots of light in the foreground represented whole galaxies.
Afterwards, Jon Arenberg, chief engineer on Webb for Northrop Grumman, was ready to go “e-mail off a question” to “my own Rolodex of closest, favorite scientists.”
He talked about the project, which took 27 years from initial planning to now.
“What you don’t see is how much simpler was the design that flew than what we started with,” said Arenberg.
Jim Flynn was the Northrop Grumman sunshield manager for the Webb from 2004-17. After closing roles as chief engineer and engineering manager on the telescope, he now works on a classified project.
Vince Heeg, deputy program manager, has been at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach for 32 years, the last four on the Webb.
“This was hard all the way until we hit the launch button,” said Heeg, who arrived from the University of Nebraska at Kearney, a math and physics major.
“Like I’ve told students, it was like finals week, every week, for 20 years,” said Arenberg.
Northrop Grumman will hold an employees event Aug. 26 to celebrate the completion of the Webb project. ER