ROCHESTER, N.Y. — It was a historic day on Tuesday as NASA released the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope showing the most detailed images of the universe to date.
The images take us billions of years back in time.
Engineers in Rochester helped make it possible.
“It was fantastic,” L3 Harris Technologies engineer Tony Whitman said. “This is over 20 years of long hours and scratching our heads, trying to figure out how we're going to build and test this thing that has never been done before.”
It was a moment 20 years in the making for Whitman. He joined his colleagues to watch NASA’s live release of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first full-color images.
“Yeah, it's a great feeling to have spent all that time, most of my career, working on this telescope and now, boom, we get these images that have never been seen before,” Whitman said.
Some 300 engineers, scientists and specialists at L3Harris integrated the Webb’s complex system of mirrors and rigorously tested the telescope’s hardware to simulate the harsh conditions of space, including being able to function in a temperature of 400 degrees below zero.
“My job was to help build and align the optical test set that we used at Johnson Space Center to make sure that once it got into orbit it would work and take images the way we expected it to,” L3Harris Technologies engineer Rebecca Borrelli said.
Borrelli spent her time suited up, working on the telescope, in anticipation of this day.
“And what we’re seeing today is just breathtakingly beautiful,” Borrelli said.
Webb captures images of light from interstellar formations more than 13 billion years old.
“It’s definitely a first,” Whitman said. “I have to believe the astronomers. Theoretically, that’s the beginning of the universe. I actually had to wrap my around this about 20 years ago when we had to figure out what we were doing – the idea of building a time machine that could see that far back.”
“It's incredible,” Borerrelli said. “It's really hard to really internalize that and what that means, you know, to think about that these are back from the formation of the galaxy. You can sort of understand it on paper, but really internalizing that and what that means is mind-boggling.”
This event has Rochester written all over it, with both Borrelli and Whitman coming straight out of the University of Rochester with advanced degrees and with L3Harris continuing to make its name as a leader in engineering technology worldwide with its work with NASA.
“One of the reasons that L3Harris is a part of this is that we take advantage of the optical industry that Rochester is known to be a hub for,” Whitman said.
The team proudly watched the images being presented, including one called Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies.
“It's really exciting,” Borelli said. “It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There's not many people that can say they've been a part of something like this. And I'm really proud to have been a part of it. I feel very honored to be a part of it.”
“I get to talk to people about it for years to come,” Whitman said. “So it’s definitely a proud moment and a great experience."
Despite the years of work, there were still fingers crossed that everything would go off without a hitch. It turns out the stars aligned.
“This is just a stepping stone for where we're going to go from here in terms of science and technology,” Borrelli said.