While many of us witnessed the Christmas launch of the James Webb Space Telescope as excited public, one engineer in our community saw 20 years of his life being launched into space. His personal story, through his eyes, is now available for the rest of us to experience. 

John McCloskey, Chief EMC engineer with Goddard Space Flight Center, shown in Figure 1, spent almost half of his career working on the JWST, solving and troubleshooting EMC and RF issues, amongst other test challenges.

Figure 1. John McCloskey watching the JWST launch.

Along the way, he recorded his experiences at important milestones. Through an eight-part series of 30-minute YouTube videos, he brings viewers along on a whirlwind journey to witness the tensions, thrills, and feats of engineering that went into his success. Through John’s eyes, we can vicariously experience the engineering details.

The JWST was launched on December 25, 2021 at 7:20 am EST. It has become the most expensive space observatory, at a total cost of about $9.7B, but worth every penny. It is a tour deforce of a successfully managed project, including the design, construction, and deployment of a physically large, multi-national, multi-technology, logistically complex, precision scientific instrument spanning more than 20 years and involving thousands of specialists.

It was designed for a diffraction-limited resolution of 2 um. It has turned out to have a 1 um resolution. It was designed for a 10-year lifetime of the helium cryo-fluid. It now looks like the helium will last 20 years.

Every image taken since it became operational has opened up a new window into the universe. From its very first image, the deep sky region SMACS 0723, shown in Figure 2, astrophysics increased their estimate of the total number of galaxies by 10x. 

Figure 2. Deep-field view of the early universe, courtesy of NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI. The five points with diffraction spikes are the only starts in this image; everything else is galaxy. The distortion rings are from gravitational lensing. 

Just how incredible is the capability of the JWST? John Mather, a senior project scientist and one of the founding designers of the JWST, says: “If you were a bumble bee hovering above the earth at the distance of the moon, the JWST could see you from reflected sunlight and thermal emissions.”

As outside admirers of this program, we see the end results. It just works. But the real story is how the engineers and scientists started with an idea and turned it into the most incredible piece of hardware ever built, now working remotely 1 million miles from Earth. 

John is also an active member of the IEEE EMC Society, organizing and coordinating the annual Henry Ott Fundamentals of EMC Tutorial Series at the IEEE EMC/SIPI Symposium. He is an avid guitarist, bicyclist, and video journalist. Figure 3 shows John at the launch pad in French Guiana with his foldable bike he took with him when he helped set up the ground launch station.

Figure 3. John, his travel bike, and the JWST on the launch pad.

Over his 20-year involvement with the JWST development, he chronicled the thrills and tension of working behind the scenes to bring the JWST to life. 

As outside observers, we see a huge space telescope with oddly shaped hexagonal mirrors. An example of a mock-up is shown in Figure 4. 

Through John’s eyes, we see how every detail matters in such a large, complex project. The miswiring of an RS422 interface in mixing up the x pin with the X pin created days of high stress with the rocket on the launch pad and poor communications with the ground station. 

We see how a 1.5 ft. extra length in an antenna test stand that was on its way from NASA to French Guiana taxed the ingenuity of two engineers and numerous trips to Home Depot on a Sunday to invent and implement a last-minute workaround. 

We see how a marginal local “de la mere” power distribution system in French Guiana caused a ground fault interrupt that shut down the entire launch ground station. It was finally traced to common current spikes occurring when multiple racks of equipment came off their battery backup all at the same time.

John’s video journal is more than the historical account of the JWST development; it is also his personal journey. Many of the vignettes are accompanied by music, including some of his guitar solos as well as songs by his band, Outta Scope. If you are a space fan, you do not want to miss the song, “Somebody Will” by Ada Palmer, performed by Heather Dale, which is played over the closing credits.

Some of us have devoted a good fraction of our lives to a project and can look back on the journey to reflect on the awesome, life-changing experience. Whether or not you have been through a similar journey yourself, you can experience the journey of the JWST vicariously through John’s video series, which can be found here.