Launching a time machine
Meet two of the Michigan Engineers behind the James Webb Space Telescope.
6 minutes
December 2023 marked the two-year anniversary of the James Webb Space Telescope’s launch. The largest and most powerful telescope ever launched into space, Webb was designed to study galaxies so far away from Earth that their light takes 13.5 billion years to reach it. That ancient light gives us a view of our universe that dates back to the origins of the very first stars and galaxies.
Michigan Engineering alumni played a big role in getting Webb safely into space, and they’re still working to keep it safe and maximize its useful life. Those alums include Robby Swoish (BS AERO ’06, MS CLaSP ’07) and Connor Todd (BS ME ’20, MS CLaSP ’21).
Unboxing Webb–from a million miles away
Swoish is the program manager for the James Webb Space Telescope at Northrop Grumman, supporting NASA on Webb’s maintenance and operations. He helped direct the delicate task of unfolding the telescope’s fragile, tennis-court-sized sun shield after Webb was first launched into orbit. The shield is necessary to shade the telescope from nearby sources of heat so that it can detect faint traces of infrared light as they trickle in from the edges of the universe.
Engineers from Northrop Grumman designed and tested the five-layered shield that acts as a giant parasol, shading Webb’s sensitive mirrors and instruments. Composed of Kapton, a thin, heat-resistant film, the shield was carefully folded around the observatory so that it could fit into the nose of a rocket during launch. Once in space, it had to be unfolded remotely. Swoish helped plan, develop, test and execute the computer code and sequence of events that orchestrated the process.
The sun shield and its related unfolding mechanisms created a long list of what space engineers call “single-point failures”–critical steps that could end the whole mission if they don’t go exactly as planned.
“We had 344 single-point failures on Webb,” Swoish said. “That’s an incredibly large number. A typical spacecraft only has around a dozen.”
Swoish helped train and manage a team of engineers and telescope operators that guided Webb through those potentially mission-ending challenges. Most of the failure points were met as the team executed the commands that unfolded the telescope and its sun shield into their working configurations enroute to its orbit around the Sun, approximately one million miles away from Earth.
A few steps in Webb’s operations plan didn’t quite work as Swoish’s team had originally planned, but the team had trained for such setbacks and was able to recover. In some cases, they even improved the spacecraft’s overall efficiency compared to the original plan.
“Getting through all of those potential failure points and challenges was certainly a tense point for the entire team, but it was a very rewarding project once we got through it,” Swoish said. “It shows that you shouldn’t be afraid to challenge yourself. A lot of my career opportunities were things that I didn’t feel ready for at first, but I said yes anyway and I grew.”
For Swoish, the biggest reward is knowing that he has enabled astronomers to capture awe-inspiring photographs of our universe. Webb’s very first deep-field image, for example, was revealed in July 2022 and remains Swoish’s favorite. The image reveals thousands of galaxies within a portion of the night sky so small that a grain of sand held at arm’s length would completely cover it.
“That image makes you think about how we are just a tiny part of this universe,” said Swoish. “Yet, we’ve been able to advance to the point where we can develop technology that can look at some of the first light that appeared after the Big Bang. It’s incredible.”
Swoish continues to manage teams that are constantly optimizing Webb’s operations and monitoring the vehicle’s vitals–such as temperature and voltage–to ensure it stays healthy.
Keeping Webb safe from space junk
Now that it’s in orbit and at work collecting data, Webb’s delicate instruments need to be protected from asteroids and other space hazards. And Connor Todd is helping to make it happen.
Todd is an integration and test engineer for the James Webb Space Telescope at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI), which acts as Webb’s science and mission operations center for NASA.
The post is the culmination of a dream that began when Todd spent time camping with his family in central Pennsylvania. It was a three to four hour drive from where he grew up in Philadelphia and away from the big city’s light pollution. There, Todd saw the night sky’s true glory.
“It can be hard to get a good look at the stars and the Milky Way,” he said. “To see for the first time the quantity, enormity, and density of what’s out there in the universe is a really moving moment.”
His team at STSI recently helped develop a software system that protects Webb from space hazards and could extend its mission lifetime.
Because Webb orbits the Sun about one million miles away from Earth, it’s nearly impossible for astronauts to repair the telescope if it’s damaged–and there are plenty of potential dangers. Small rocks hurtling through space (called “micrometeoroids”) typically hit other objects at around 44,000 miles per hour. Webb was designed to withstand the most common micrometeoroids, which are tinier than grains of sand, but a large and dense enough rock could potentially cause serious damage.
Webb has been hit over 20 times since it launched in 2021. So far, only one collision has had a noticeable effect on the telescope’s performance, and Webb has continued to exceed mission requirements after the impact. But too many impacts like this might significantly shorten its lifetime. Todd and the rest of Webb’s operations team needed to find a way to reduce the telescope’s risk.
They decided to focus on protecting the telescope’s most vulnerable spot: the mirrors that reflect light into its scientific instruments. The risk to those mirrors is highest when they’re on the forward-facing side of the craft as it travels through space.
So Todd helped test a planning system in Webb’s science operations software that keeps the mirrors facing the trailing edge of the telescope whenever possible, minimizing the relative momentum of any rock that might hurtle toward its mirrors. Used during the mission planning process, the system warns the operations team and astronomers when a maneuver could put the telescope’s mirrors in harm’s way.
Once the operations team is alerted to the threat, they can help astronomers find alternative ways to orient the telescope, reducing the risk to the mirrors while still capturing good images. For example, observing an object at a different time of year–when Webb is at a different position in its orbit around the Sun–could allow the mirrors to point in a safer direction.
“I consider this the most impactful problem that I’ve worked on so far because it directly concerns the long-term health of the telescope,” Todd said. “It’s impossible to know how many micrometeoroid impacts we are avoiding by implementing this warning system, but I can tell you that this is a fix that will ensure that we are doing the highest quality science that we can manage for the longest time possible.”