First Ad<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nSeason 2, episode 20: How the Webb Telescope Sees Back in Time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1990, NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope. It had faced years of delays and cost overruns. But it proved the existence of black holes, calculated the age of the universe, and delivered astonishing views of deep space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Six years later, NASA began planning a successor\u2014a space telescope that would ultimately be three times bigger and 100 times more powerful than the Hubble, capable of seeing stars so distant, their light has been traveling for nearly 14 billion years\u2014since just after the Big Bang. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It would be the biggest, most ambitious space observatory ever built: the James Webb Space Telescope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They call it JWST for short, although it\u2019s actually exactly the same number of syllables as \u201cJames Webb Space Telescope.\u201d Anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SCOTT: It\u2019s got seven times the collecting area, a mirror which collects more light, to see things that are either dimmer or further away. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nI first met Scott Willoughby just before Christmas 2021, when the Webb was scheduled to lift off. When he showed me a model of the thing\u2014I mean, it looks really cool, but nothing like what we think of as a telescope.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scott Willoughby was the Webb\u2019s program manager. He works for Northrup Grumman, which NASA hired to do most of the design and construction. Building the Webb was his life\u2019s work for 12 years<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: Most people think of\u2013 a tube with little glass lenses. This thing is not a tube. And it doesn\u2019t have glass lenses.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: I took my dad to the World Science Festival in New York in June of 2010. We put a full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope in Battery Park in New York. It\u2019s at the southern tip of Manhattan. \u2018Cause we really just wanted people to come around and ask questions. And he looked at it, and he\u2019s like, \u201cThat\u2019s not a telescope.\u201d (LAUGH) I\u2019m like\u2014\u201cyour son\u2019s been leadin\u2019 this for (LAUGH) a few years\u2026 Dad, I\u2019m\u2013 I\u2019m here to tell you that\u2013\u201d He goes, \u201cNope. That\u2019s not a telescope.\u201d<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Parents. Am I right?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: Yeah. And he just, like, you know, he was lookin\u2019 for somethin\u2019 that a pirate would hold up, right, you know, in there. And (UNINTEL). So we had the argument out in there. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe Webb also works <\/em>unlike any previous telescope. <\/p>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: I think a lotta people have heard about the Hubble Telescope. How is the Webb different?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: Webb\u2019s eye is different than Hubble\u2019s eye. Mostly, Hubble\u2019s eye is in the optical range. Mostly, what Hubble sees is what we see.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nWebb is trained to work in the infrared domain almost exclusively, and very far into it. So it\u2013 and it\u2019s important, because a lot of the juicy information from the beginning of the universe has been shifted from the optical into the infrared range. And with\u2013 you know, I w\u2013 in\u2013<\/s> in a whole science, you know, class, somebody could explain something called red shift. But it literally means\u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Actually, would you mind explaining red shift?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: Yeah. So it\u2019s\u2013 it\u2019s\u2013 what folks know more in terms of sound. So when sound comes toward you, like a car on a street, you hear it sort of go, \u201cVrrr.\u201d And when it goes away, it goes, \u201cVrrr.\u201d The only reason that sounds like to you on the street corner is \u2018cause when sound comes towards you, it compresses. And when it goes away from you, it stretches. \n\nWell, light in the universe? Same thing. So light that is, in effect, going away from you, and the universe is expanding\u2014Hubble, right, told us that wavelengths that start this long, over time, stretch longer. So an optical wavelength stretches into the infrared. It\u2019s called red shift. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSo we\u2019re designing an eye like\u2013 like infrared, you know, or like night vision goggles for the sky, where we\u2019re gonna find infrared out in the universe. And the reason that it\u2019s hard to find is because infrared is also heat. And you have to be colder than what you\u2019re looking for. Otherwise, you see yourself. [CUT THE TWO LINES THAT ARE HERE] So Webb is also running at -400\u00b0 Fahrenheit. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Oh, man. Is that the reason it\u2019s so far away? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: So that\u2019s the other difference from Hubble. Hubble is actually clo\u2013 we\u2019re in Los Angeles. So for the viewers here, Hubble is closer to us when it goes over our head than San Francisco is to you in (LAUGH) your living room.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Really?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: Yeah. Because it\u2019s \/ literally only 300 miles\u2013 you know, just vertically off of the Earth. \/ But with that, since it\u2019s so close to Earth, it stays warm. Right? \u2018Cause Earth is warm. \/ For Webb to operate at -400\u00b0 Fahrenheit, we send it four times further away than the moon. So we\u2019re not 300 miles away. We\u2019re one million miles away. \/<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSo we\u2019re goin\u2019 four times further than the moon to this magical point, and let\u2019s call it gravity stabilized, pseudo-stabilized point where the tug of the Earth, and the sun, and Mars, and everything out there is such that it will actually follow the Earth around the sun in a 365-day orbit, except a million miles further away. And with that, we can keep our optics\u2013 colder.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nWhat he\u2019s describing is LaGrange point 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That would be La Grange, as in the brilliant Italian-French mathematician Joe LaGrange. Or, as he was formally known, Joseph-Louis LaGrange. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He theorized in 1764 that there are certain points in space where an object would be in perfect equilibrium, balanced between the gravitational pulls of two celestial bodies, like the earth and the sun, and centrifugal force. Like, you wouldn\u2019t need fuel to keep a satellite parked at that spot. And that\u2019s where the Webb telescope sits: At LaGrange point 2. It\u2019s always on the side of the earth away from the sun, so that sunlight never hits the telescope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And by this time, you might be wondering: what\u2019s the point of all this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: What\u2019s it trying to see?\n\nSCOTT: So the mission is wonderful, because I\u2019m not even a scientist and I understand it. We\u2019re gonna find out how the first stars formed. Because we have an eye that will see energy, right, that came outta there, a photon with a fingerprint of the day it left its star, just as if I left a fingerprint on that wall. \n\nAnd it\u2019s so far away from us it hasn\u2019t even reached us yet. And we put up this big optic, seven times bigger than Hubble. And like raindrops in a pool, we\u2019re gonna collect photons that are 13 and a half billion years old. And with our instruments, we\u2019re gonna break down that spectrum of light, and find out how the start of a Periodic Table, of how the elements that are in you, and me, and our planet, and everything else we know, came to be.\n\nThat\u2019s what Webb is going to do. And we\u2019ve never been able to see it. Hubble\u2019s not sensitive enough, \u2018cause it\u2019s more in the optical range and is warmer. So we have to leave our planet, go a million miles away, right, to find this. And that\u2019s just one of our missions! (LAUGH)<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: A lot of the NASA marketing material says this thing can see back in time, that it\u2019s a time machine. How is it a time machine? It\u2019s seeing distance, not time.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: So even the speed of light is finite. It\u2013 it is only so fast. It takes eight minutes from starlight, our sun, to get 93 million miles. So, in effect, when we see our sun, it\u2019s eight minutes old. I\u2019m looking back in time, because I\u2019m seeing the information as it was. We\u2019re doin\u2019 this on an epic scale. We\u2019re looking at a sun that isn\u2019t 93 million miles away, it\u2019s 13.5 billion lightyears<\/em> away. And then that photon just took that long, patiently traveling, so we can put up this, you know, big telescope and collect it. And in theory, you\u2019re looking back in time. You\u2019re looking at the history. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Wow. Okay. So that\u2019s one mission is to\u2013 to look back almost to the Big Bang. What\u2013 what are the other ones?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: The telescope will also look at planets that are around other stars. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nOh yeah, baby. This is the cool part. This is where the Webb is going to look at exoplanets\u2014that is, planets around other stars. Not just look at them\u2014it can tell us what their atmospheres are like!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not by sending some kind of jar with a lid to a planet millions of light-years away, although that would make a great Boy Scout merit-badge project. No, we do it more cleverly. Here\u2019s how Jane Rigby explains it. She\u2019s the JWST\u2019s chief scientist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
RIGBY: A lot of the work that we\u2019re doing with exoplanets is transit spectroscopy, where we stare at a \u2014 a distant star, and when a planet goes in front of that star, gets a little bit dimmer because that\u2014 the planet moves in front. Right? And by analyzing how the rainbow changes when the planet is in front of the star, versus not in front of the star, and taking the difference of those two rainbows, we can tell you what the atmosphere of that planet is like. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nAnyway. The point is, the Webb telescope is super duper cold. Not much warmer than absolute zero. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, remember, infrared is a form of heat. So any warmth from the sun and the earth would blind this telescope to distant starlight. To illustrate how they protect against that <\/em>problem, Willoughby showed me a model of the telescope. <\/p>\n\n\n\nDP: So this is the telescope.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: A teeny one.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nDP: Not actual size.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe main mirror looks like a golden honeycomb, made up of 18 big hexagons arrayed more or less as a disc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
SCOTT: Every one of these mirrors has a motor. So we can move \u2018em, you, in and out, and we can adjust \u2018em. So in the end they all look like one mirror segment to the universe.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Was it made golden for looks?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: It was not. (LAUGH) That\u2019s a great question. For Webb, gold reflects infrared. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThis giant lens focuses the light it collects onto a very small second mirror, held in place by three struts about 23 feet away. This secondary mirror bounces the light back through a hole in the main mirror, and on into the scientific instruments behind it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But remember: Heat blinds the telescope\u2014and the sun and the earth are both constant sources of heat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
SCOTT: So we have to block out any shred of that sun by deploying a big sun shield. A big\u2013 you know, umbrella, effectively.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nAnd sure enough: Beneath the huge golden honeycomb is a huge heat barrier the size of a tennis court. Five layers of Mylar, each one the thickness of a human hair. Mylar is that shiny silver plastic stuff they make novelty helium balloons out of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: So all this is to just separate the whole thing into a cold side from the hot side?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: Correct. That cold side? Minus 400\u00b0 Fahrenheit. The hot side? About plus 200\u00b0 Fahrenheit. Sunlight will never touch these mirrors as they get on orbit. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nNow, if you\u2019re doing the math in your head, you might be going: \u201cThe size of a tennis court? How are they gonna fit that into a rocket?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Exactly! And now we\u2019ve arrived at the hardest part of all. This telescope is three stories tall and 70 feet wide\u2014way too big to fit into any existing rocket. NASA\u2019s solution? Fold it up, like origami. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
SCOTT: So this folds along here. And along here. Those three fold back. And those three fold back.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: They fold\u2013<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: Yeah. So like ears. So this wing\u2019ll deploy, this wing. And this is actually stowed up and over. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: This is the part that worries me, as a layperson. I mean, how complex is this unfolding process?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: It\u2019s good to be worried. They have things that are called single-point failures. Right? This has to move this way and there\u2019s only one of \u2018em. And Webb has over 300 of those.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: 300 hundred things that have to go exactly right?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: Correct. Yeah. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nIf one of those 300 points of failure\u2026failed, then NASA would have itself a $10 billion piece of space junk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
SCOTT: So what do ya do with those? You just\u2013 you test \u2018em to greater extremes than they\u2019ll ever see. If it\u2019s gotta be this cold and this warm, we test it this cold and this warm. If it\u2019s gotta be shaken like this, we shake it like this. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nRIGBY: We vibrated it. We fake the violence of a launch, the noise of a launch, right? It\u2019s like 140 decibels. So they have these giant speakers that I really want to have, like, can they play, like, some music I actually like? Um, but they play the noise of a launch. Um, they \u2014 they shake. They take it \u2014 we took the whole telescope on a shaker table, and we shook it.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: I mean, it\u2019s a bunch of pulleys and cables to unfold that.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nRIGBY: Yeah, a good fraction of a kilometer of cabling. Yes.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: That\u2019s, like, asking for trouble. (LAUGHS)<\/pre>\n\n\n\nRIGBY: Multiples motors, tons of pulleys. It actually all looks a little like, um, the rigging of a sailboat. Like, they had binders and binders of plans. I mean like a couple bookshelves of plans. \u201cWhat if this goes wrong? What if this goes wrong? This is how we do it.\u201d They had the most complicated flow charts I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nNow, before launch, the Webb project had its critics. It was way over budget. It was way delayed\u2014the original launch date was in 2007! So plenty of people probably muttered, \u201cOh, those incompetent government bureaucrats! They can\u2019t do anything on time and on budget.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s a little more complicated than that. The plan was for this machine to sit a million miles from earth\u2014four times as far as the moon. We\u2019ve never sent astronauts that far. In other words, if something does go wrong, we can\u2019t exactly send a repair crew, like we did with the Hubble Telescope in in 1993.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So NASA had no choice but to do all that testing while it was still on the ground. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
RIGBY: Not all of those tests went great. We did a deployment test where we deployed this whole sun shield, right? And we \u2014 we unfolded it on the ground as it was going to unfold in space. And they didn\u2019t work! But that\u2019s how we caught the errors before we sent the thing up into space.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nBut the thing is\u2026every time a test on earth reveals a flaw, they have to fix the flaw and then redo <\/em>the tests. And that takes time and takes money. There\u2019s just no choice. I\u2019d argue that the time and money overruns weren\u2019t incompetence\u2014they were kind of just the opposite. It\u2019s methodical and careful, because you\u2019ve only got one shot at this thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\nYou\u2019re building a one-off, one-of-a-kind machine, made of folding parts and hinges and cables\u2014you just can\u2019t predict the timeline or the cost when you\u2019re starting out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: You can\u2019t iterate on this thing.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: We (LAUGH)\u2013 we\u2019re building one thing for 19 years. And they ask, \u201cHow can you build somethin\u2019 for 19 years and have it be relevant?\u201d Well, first of all, we\u2019re lookin\u2019 for light that\u2019s 13.5 billion years old, so another few years won\u2019t make a difference. (LAUGH) It\u2019s still gonna be there. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nIn the end, NASA settled on a launch date: Christmas Day, 2021. From a launch pad in French Guiana, aboard a French rocket called Ariane 5. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: So at this point, days away from the launch, how confident are you? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: Confidence is built, to me, out of, \u201cDid we do everything that we could possibly have done?\u201d I can confidently say we did everything that we needed to do. We took every piece of it and we did the best we absolutely, possibly could. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nWilloughby knew that once the Webb was in space, he\u2019d have to wait 29 days to find out if the unfolding worked, and then five months for the telescope to calibrate and cool down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
SCOTT: So in the end, it takes us a half a year before you\u2019ll be reporting on some image that humankind has never seen before in our lives. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: And is that the point where you can finally sleep at night?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: I\u2019ll feel a lot better then. (LAUGH)<\/pre>\n\n\n\nWell\u2026guess what? It\u2019s coming up on two years since that launch. That time has come and gone. We now know whether the telescope unfolded smoothly without botching up. Whether it reached its target spot a million miles away. Whether that $10 billion was well spent. Whether Scott Willoughby is getting any sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And after the ad break, you\u2019ll know, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2<\/strong>nd<\/sup><\/strong> Ads<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nWell, let\u2019s put you out of your suspense misery: The Webb Telescope took off flawlessly on Christmas Day 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Audio from the launch<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nGuy: Main engine start. And liftoff! D\u00e9collage\u2014liftoff! From a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nTo get the details, I Zoomed up my old pal, Scott Willoughby, now a year and a half after our first interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: Scott Willoughby. How are you doing, man? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: I am doing great. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Yeah, you are. When we\u2014when we last spoke, it was ten days to launch. And our conversation was full of statements like, \u2018Well, six months from now, we\u2019ll know.\u2019 So\u2014do we know? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: We absolutely know. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Let\u2019s go to the day of the launch. You were there? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: Yeah, I was. I was in French Guiana. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: I\u2019m trying to figure out what the team who put this thing together must have felt upon launch. Because it\u2019s exciting, but it doesn\u2019t answer any of the \u2018will it work\u2019 questions. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: And that\u2019s exactly\u2014I mean, I\u2019ve actually struggled with the word to describe an incredible feeling of elation, but not wanting to spike the ball on the five yard line, right? The game isn\u2019t over. You know, we\u2019re in the, we\u2019re in the first quarter, right? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSo we spent 20 years, and especially the last several years, treating this thing like a Faberg\u00e9 egg, right? And now here it is, you know, on a rocket, about to get lit, right, below, this explosion, and then, you know, launched into space, that journey through Earth\u2019s atmosphere. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nAnd that emotion was\u2014you know, I compare it to, you know, watching your kids leave for school and knowing that, you know, they\u2019re not coming back in the house, you know, as a kid again, right? it\u2019s a tear-jerker kind of thing because you\u2019re literally watching it drift away. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Here\u2019s the big one for me\u2014what made this an amazing story for me is the difficulty of the engineering involved\u2014according to you and NASA, there were over 300 points of failure, as they say, which made it sound super risky and super failure-possible. And it turns out, as far as I know, everything went really well. None of those failures failed. Which makes me ask, was it really that dramatic and risky, or was some of that heightened to make it seem exciting? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: It was not heightened. As a matter of fact, I never thought we described well enough, actually, how hard this was, so people really had that appreciation. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSo there were 344 things had to operate successfully. That mirror deployment\u2014if it doesn\u2019t come out, the mission is over<\/em>. It has hinges. And if the hinge gets stuck, right, the boom doesn\u2019t go out. So there\u2019s multiple hinges and, and, and even when it gets out there, eventually we had to drive the mirror into its position where it is, and moments like that were insanely tense. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Wow. Did anything go wrong? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: There were some long days that were, you know, edge-of-your-seat exhausting, you know. The covers that protected our sunshield membranes. It\u2019s got 90 cables and it had 107 release devices and telescopic booms, right? Boom, boom, boom. Well, when those covers first got fired to roll back, we didn\u2019t see the immediate verification that they had completely rolled. And then you don\u2019t know if that\u2019s because they\u2019re stuck\u2014because we can\u2019t look at it\u2014you know, or did they just roll maybe to a slightly different position, right? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nI won\u2019t keep you on the edge of your seat\u2014they were still good\u2014but it was different. And that day started at five in the morning on December 31st and finished at 11:55 p.m., you know, literally 5 minutes before New Year\u2019s Eve in Baltimore, when we finally knew it all worked on, on those particular steps, because we took our time. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nAnd at 11:55 p.m., I went home. I got on the phone with my daughters. I said, \u201cHappy New Year\u2019s.\u201d They\u2019re like, \u201cwhere are you going to party, Dad?\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m going to sleep.\u201d<\/pre>\n\n\n\nOn day 3 after launch, the telescope passed the moon\u2019s orbit. On Day 7, the sunshield finished unfurling. On Day 13, the main mirror began to unfold. On Day 20, NASA began the delicate process of adjusting the 18 hexagonal mirrors into precise shape and position, using the seven motors behind each one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And on Day 30, with a few short spurts from its thrusters, the Webb Telescope coasted to a stop at LaGrange point 2. \u201cHome, home on Lagrange,\u201d NASA tweeted. Of course they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And on Day 48, Webb sent back its first picture. Kinda blurry, out of focus, but definitely a picture of stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then, on Day 165\u2014that would be June 8, 2022\u2014the telescope delivered the kind of news we didn\u2019t want to hear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meteoroid newscast.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nGUY: Just seven months into the mission, the $10 billion device has already sustained irreversible damage. A tiny, but incredibly fast-moving space rock slammed into one of the telescope\u2019s 18 gold-plated mirrors, leaving a small but significant dent.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: That must have been a scary day. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: We prepare for micrometeorites. This wasn\u2019t a surprise to us. A lot of the articles came out and intimated it like there was this big shock. But in this particular case, the size of the micrometeorite was bigger than our statistics had thought, and bigger\u2014 like, you know, I don\u2019t know the fraction of a grain of sand to a full grain of sand. I mean, we\u2019re not talking bigger, like a rock; we\u2019re still talking small. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nBut they travel at upwards of 17,000 miles an hour. So, you know, if I shot a 17,000 mile an hour grain of sand at you, it\u2019s going to hurt, right? It leaves a little, you know, mark behind where it hits. But we have an optic seven times bigger than Hubble, so precisely aligned that its surface accuracy is so that almost anywhere you hit, every photon will come back. It has such a perfect curvature. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSo this small thing is inconsequential. There is zero impact to science. It was a lot sexier to say, \u201cWebb\u2019s got, you know, bashed by a micrometeorite and it\u2019s damaged,\u201d and et cetera. And it\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, it got hit, but it\u2019s good.\u201d<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Are you impugning the media, sir? <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: No, no, no, no, no. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nAnd then, on July 11, 2022, NASA released the first science-usable photograph taken by the telescope. Actually, the President released it, on a live broadcast from the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BIDEN: That\u2019s who we are as a nation: a nation of possibilities. And now let\u2019s take a look at the very first image from this miraculous telescope. (Applause.)<\/em><\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe picture shows a galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. It\u2019s a very cool photo\u2014but the next day, NASA released four more pictures, and they were incredible<\/em>. The Southern Ring nebula. Stephan\u2019s Quintet, a collection of five galaxies 290 million light-years away. And a breathtaking shot of the Carina Nebula, a massive cloud of gas and dust where some stars are forming and others are dying.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: I remember reading, \u201cStephan\u2019s Quintet is 290 million light years away.\u201d 290 million light years awavy?! I mean, it shouldn\u2019t be possible. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: And we\u2019re seeing it in fine detail\u2014like, I mean, literally, like, you know, in\u2014as, as if we were kind of looking at something across our living room. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe fifth image wasn\u2019t a photo at all. It was a spectroscopy graph of the elements in the atmosphere of a hot, puffy gas-giant exoplanet called WASP-96 b. The graph told us that there\u2019s water in its atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SCOTT: To me, it was\u2014it was mind-blowing, because they\u2019re showing that we can detect signs of elements in an atmosphere of another planet. I mean, humankind has now created an instrument that can do that. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nIf this podcast weren\u2019t an audio medium, this is the part where I\u2019d show you some of these pictures, and you\u2019d be like, \u201cwhoaaa.\u201d I mean, it\u2019s easy enough to find \u2018em\u2014just Google \u201cwebb telescope photos.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or maybe you saw \u2018em when they came out. I mean, it was global news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SCOTT: When the president released the science\u2014not only that, Google changes Doodle. The Empire State Building turned gold. The headlines of almost every major, you know, newspaper had the images. Piccadilly Square in London, Times Square in New York\u2014I mean, the, the world celebrated those first science images from old school to new school, right? That day just floored me. I wouldn\u2019t have ever thought that it would happen like that. Just floored me. Absolutely. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: The public getting interested in, in space and time. I mean that\u2019s\u2014that doesn\u2019t happen often.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: No. I will argue with anyone until the end of my time. What, this century, has had such a big impact positively? Tell me the last good thing that hit like that. I think you got to go back a century. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nOf course, what\u2019s missing from most of the discussion about these images is that\u2014well, they don\u2019t actually look like they look. I mean, if you were out there in space, you would just see blackness. Remember, the Webb detects infrared <\/em>light, which we can\u2019t see, at least without night-vision goggles. NASA has tweaked the photos to make them visible to our pathetic and limited eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRIGBY: Our eyes see a narrow range of light that the sun makes a lot of, and that is useful for, like, detecting lions from grass. Right? But there are animals on earth that can see bluer or redder than our eyes. Bees can see in the blue because flowers, light up really bright in the blue and ultraviolet. Pit vipers can see more in the infrared, right?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Cool!<\/pre>\n\n\n\nRIGBY: That\u2019s how they find their prey. They look for the warm thing. Right? So different animals on earth have made different eyeballs, different detectors that are optimized for different purposes. The Webb telescope is an infrared telescope, OK? At the edge of its range, it can see the same light that you can see, but then it goes redder past what to your eye is invisible. But that\u2019s not that there\u2019s anything weird about that light. It\u2019s just a limitation of our eyes. And so just like soldiers use infrared vision at night to compensate for, you know, to get powers their own eyes don\u2019t have, it\u2019s the same thing. We\u2019re using technology to look at light that is invisible to our eyes, but that is still out there.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nFor Webb, when we get an image, it\u2019s grayscale, it\u2019s coming in as ones and zeros. That\u2019s just what the detector saw. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the stunning pictures we see online are definitely not grayscale. They\u2019re incredibly beautiful color photos. And for that, we have Joe DePasquale and Alyssa Pagan to thank. Their job descriptions are NASA science visuals developers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
JOE: That means that I take the data from the telescope, and work with data from different filters of the telescope to compose color images that we then use for press releases.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Excellent. And<\/em> general human inspiration.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nJOE: Yes.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Okay. So, when \u2014 when we see these stunning Webb Telescope photos, they\u2019ve come from you two.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nJOE: Most of them have. Yes. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: And \u2014 and they didn\u2019t look like that in outer space.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nJOE: That\u2019s right. So that question actually comes up a lot: \u201cIs what Webb sees real?\u201d And absolutely yes, it is real. These are real objects in space, and Webb is observing them in infrared wavelengths, which our eyes are not sensitive to. And so, it\u2019s our job to be able to translate that light into something that our eyes can see. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nWe\u2019re taking images that Webb has \u2014 has captured in different wavelengths and then assigning colors to them according to their wavelengths. So, the longest wavelengths are red. The shortest wavelengths are blue. And the things in between are green. And then, that color all combines together to create these color images.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Okay. And is that a standard astronomical color scheme? Or does China use mauve for short wavelengths, you know, like \u2014<\/pre>\n\n\n\nALYSSA: No. It\u2019s pretty standard, and it\u2019s because that\u2019s the way that we see light, and this is what we think is the truest representation of what we could possibly see \u2013if we could see an infrared light.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: If you were a \u2014 that viper that can be seen from that. Yeah.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Does red equal longer wavelengths in our visible spectrum?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nJOE: Yes.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nALYSSA: Yes.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Oh. So, you\u2019re just \u2014 you\u2019re just shrinking the range so that we can see it.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nJOE: Right.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nEver since, the Webb has been delivering one discovery after another. Galaxies so old, they formed only 200 million years after the Big Bang. If the history of the universe were a year long, those galaxies would have formed on January fifth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then JWST found water around a strange comet. Then soot-like molecules in a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years away. Then 717 new galaxies that nobody had ever seen before. Then a supermassive black hole, 9 million times more massive than our sun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And on, and on, and on. By the end of its first year of operation, scientists had published over 750 papers based on Webb data. Here\u2019s Jane Rigby, the Webb\u2019s chief scientist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
RIGBY: Oh my gosh. The Webb telescope is doing better than it was supposed to and better than honestly, I dared hope for. Across the board, our, uh, pictures are sharper and clearer because the telescope \u2014 the mirrors are working even better together than we, uh, designed them to, returning data that is deeper, sharper, clearer than we promised it would be.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nNone of us have lived so charmed a life that we deserve this. Right? It\u2019s such a joy that this telescope is working so well. The serious part of that is because it was built really<\/em> well by the engineers that designed and constructed it. But it is, oh my gosh. It\u2019s just such a joy to work with.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: All right. So approaching two years out there. Have we learned anything cool and layperson friendly?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nRIGBY: Sure. The elevator pitch for the Webb Telescope was to study \u2014 to get the baby pictures of the universe, right? To study galaxies in the process of formation. And we have delivered exactly what we promised on that topic. We have gone from, you know, with Hubble, we had a few candidates to be these very, very distant galaxies. With Webb, we\u2019re finding hundreds in just dozens of hours. It\u2019s a little embarrassing how good this telescope is for this kind of science.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nWhat have we learned? We\u2019ve been able to see that, um, in the first billion years of the universe\u2019s life, galaxies formed earlier than we expected. They, uh, were forming stars in these extreme bursts of star formation that are unlike anything in the nearby universe where they\u2019re forming stars at a rate like a thousand times what \u2014 what our own Milky way can do.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nWe\u2019ve gone from basically ignorance about what that first billion years of the universe was like to having it in crisp high definition. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nOriginally, NASA sold Congress on the idea of funding the Webb telescope with the promise that it would be fully operational for ten years. Ten years of amazing discoveries. After that, it would run out of fuel for making little adjustments in its position and angle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But even here, the JWST wanted to deliver one last chunk of happy news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SCOTT: So the two most important things for Webb that were going to consume fuel early on was when the launch vehicle left us and went to orbit, if it\u2019s tilted a little high or lower left or right, we would have to fire our own engines and correct ourselves, right?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nBut that rocket tipoff was near perfect. I mean, for all intents and purposes, it was perfect. So we never had to turn our rocket engines on to correct for what\u2019s called tip off. So immediately, that fuel is used for longer mission life, right?<\/pre>\n\n\n\nAnd then subsequently, we use the rockets on our vehicle to get us a million miles out. So we, we fired mid-course corrections, they were called\u2014MCCs, mid-course corrections\u2014and we fired those. The biggest one occurred 12 hours after launch. We did a perfect midcourse correction. Between those two things, we went from a ten-year to a over 20-year mission life.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: What? That\u2019s amazing. You guys must have had so many beer bashes in the last few months. I mean, one thing after another went right, right? I mean\u2026 <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: Yes, yes. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: For something this complex\u2026I don\u2019t get it. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: We deserved it. We deserved it, David\u2014after 20 years, we deserve that. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nFor Scott Willoughby, the Webb\u2019s success has, of course, been incredibly gratifying. But he can\u2019t shed the feeling that he\u2019s launched a child into the world, knowing that his daily life with her is over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
POGUE: Astronauts talk about when they come back from, from a mission in space\u2014they come back to Earth\u2014sometimes there\u2019s a letdown. You know, you\u2019ve been pushing so hard against something and then that resistance is gone and it\u2019s hard to stay perky. Did that happen to you once this thing was finally\u2014even though it was a giant success\u2014? I mean, you no longer have it to look forward to. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nSCOTT: It\u2019s\u2014it absolutely is. Like, if this was when Webb was going on, I could just walk up to 100 engineers on any given day. My favorite thing was to walk to people\u2019s offices. And I went from a team of 750 to 0. I\u2019m kind of the coach now, right? I went from the field to the dugout. There\u2019s those moments where it does feel like\u2014I\u2019d say it\u2019s like a void. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nI mean, Webb\u2019s still there. Heck, I\u2019m reading about it in the newspapers. Right? So there\u2019s joy, but there\u2019s not the same, reporting to Congress and reporting up to, you know, leadership at NASA and my own leadership and, and dealing with issues, right, while you\u2019re in the middle of it. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nAnd when that\u2019s all gone, I do miss the, the game being dialed up that high. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nPOGUE: Wow. Well, congratulations on having the thing freakin\u2019 work. It was\u2014it\u2019s such an ambitious thing with so many things that could go wrong. And they didn\u2019t. I\u2019m just thunderstruck. And you led it.\n\nSCOTT: You bring back a feeling in me that I don\u2019t think will ever go away. I have a feeling this sensation is going to be every bit, as, you know, all other major excitements that you think of\u2014you know, life, and children being born, and marriages, or winning my high school football league championship, you know\u2014all of those things, you can kind of feel the feeling again once you get nostalgic about it. And it just\u2014so that\u2019s going to live forever.<\/pre>\nhttps:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20230929.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Season 2 \u2022 Episode 20. Published 9\/29\/23.] On Christmas Day, 2021, NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit a million miles from Earth\u2014a huge and insanely ambitious machine, billions of dollars over budget and 14 years past deadline. Now, as the telescope completes its first year of capturing astonishing images of the universe as…More <\/svg><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n
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