Secrets of the Universe (2022–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - James Webb: The $10 Billion Space Telescope - full transcript

Humans have been looking at the stars

since the start of mankind.

For me and I think for
an awful lot of people,

we wanted to know where did we come from?

When humanity invents a new way of seeing,

we see things we never imagined.

The invention of the microscope

revealed the realm of the very small.

The invention of the telescope
revealed the realm of the very large.

Lift off.

But now, the new James Webb Space Telescope



could reveal the origins of
everything there ever was.

It's going to stare 13.5
billion years back in time.

This is going to see things
that we couldn't imagine.

Pushing the limits of technology,

this revolutionary telescope
could change what we know

about the universe forever.

But building it was fraught with technical

and financial difficulties.

When you're talking extremes like we are,

everything is a challenge.

Politics always plays a role.

Incompetence and mismanagement.

The program was on the rocks.

On a scale such as we
are talking about today.



And the committee said, nah, let's kill it.

It's not a favor to the taxpayer.

People were talking about, well,

do we even want to do this thing or not?

It's not a favor to the
American space program.

It was very stressful being
part of a crisis like this.

But we learn, we move ahead
and ultimately, we succeed.

This is the story

of the James Webb Space Telescope,

told by those who built it.

We're going to see this to the end

because we have a duty to do so.

We started on a path of a
decade long of invention.

We had to invent a lot of new technologies.

Technologies that have
never been done before.

You have no choice but to get it right.

There were those that
argued that it couldn't be done.

But we've done it.

We'll enable humankind
to unlock the mysteries

of the early universe.

This is a milestone for mankind.

For millennia we have looked at the stars

and wondered how big is the universe

and where did it come from?

What is our place in it and are we alone?

The answers would remain a mystery

to almost everyone who ever lived.

Then, less than 500 years ago,

the invention of a simple
device began to open our eyes

to the extraordinary
reality that surrounds us.

Galileo in 1610 sees
moons orbiting Jupiter.

He sees mountains and craters on the moon.

It's a tectonic event in
human understanding.

Just this little crappy little
telescope changed so much.

And then the 1920s,
when Hubble comes along,

makes observations that say, whoa.

The Milky Way galaxy is not the universe.

It's one little island in
a vast sea of galaxies.

The universe is huge and it's expanding.

Edwin Hubble's discovery

that the universe is expanding,
had enormous implications.

If things are expanding,
let's put it in reverse.

Holy cow!

These things all come to a point.

The start of our universe
and the start of time.

That was the first time in history

that people had scientific
proof that time had a beginning.

Looking at very distant objects,

we see them as they were in the past

because their light takes time to reach us.

If a telescope like the
James Webb telescope

could see the very farthest objects,

then we could see how the
first stars and galaxies formed.

Telescopes are amazing time machines

because they can let us see into the past.

But for most of the last century,

we still had little idea
of the early universe

or how it evolved.

We had a period where we
started to make real advances.

We built a telescope technically better.

We made them bigger.

Put them higher.

We could see more, we could learn more,

but we were still bound
by limitations on our planet,

Space is the place to be.

And lift off of the
space shuttle Discovery,

with the Hubble Space Telescope
on window on the universe.

Discovery is then, performance is nominal.

With the launch of the $1.5 billion

Hubble Space Telescope in 1990,

hopes were high that this instrument

would be able to see farther and therefore,

further back in time than ever before.

The Hubble Space Telescope
was going to be a game changer.

At the time Hubble flew,
we barely knew galaxies

even half the age of the universe.

Standing by for a separation.

The very early times
were just unknown to us.

This is what we really get excited about.

We're going to discover,
we're going to explore.

We're setting out across the
ocean to find something new.

Trying to boot, we're go, go.

Eagle.
Go.

We're going to look at things
we've never seen before.

Peter S.
Go flight.

EVA.
We're go.

Discovery Houston.

You have a go to open the doors.

Roger Houston.

But Hubble would prove just how difficult

building large scale
space telescopes can be.

It would come to haunt the men and women

who were tasked with building
its successor, the James Webb.

And we see first motion, looks good.

Good clearance, still looks good.

The excitement has been slowly building up.

Discovery Houston,

congratulations on a super mission.

And the world is looking forward

to reaping the benefits of your good work.

Okay, thank you Steve.

But 25 days later, dreams would be dashed.

Then we got that first image from Hubble.

We've gotten the image down here, Lauren.

We knew that Hubble
had a truly serious problem.

It was discovered that there was something

really wrong with the optical prescription.

The data was was blurred.

Cable news network, I don't
know exactly who to ask.

As far as you know, what happened?

Okay, the bottom line is

we have a major problem with the hammer.

There was a mistake or
an error made somewhere,

that resulted then,

in the mirror being
made to the wrong figure.

It turns out the mirror was ground

to exactly the wrong shape.

We feel right now,

that there's probably no real science

that we can do with the wide field camera

and I'll stop there.

Young lady first and then
we'll come to you, okay.

I'm Mary Wolf with NBC,

some people will say
that not all the testing

was done on the ground.

Yes?

If this wouldn't have happened,

had the test been done on the ground,

with possibly some of the
problems wouldn't have occurred.

Is there a reaction to that?

Well, we did not

test the two mirrors in combination.

To test the total telescope,

is an extremely costly process.

We would have to do something
dramatic to recover Hubble.

But even as teams struggled

with Hubble's troubles,

some were already
thinking about a successor.

In 1989, even before Hubble was launched,

astronomers were already thinking

about what would come next.

They said that you guys
really need to start thinking

about the next mission.

Our reaction was,

you really want us thinking
about something else?

And they said, you should.

So we said yes, sir.

We'll do it.

And so we went off thinking about

what would one really
like to do after Hubble?

The James Webb Telescope

started off being called the NGST,

for next generation space telescope.

For the next space telescope

we thought we could go bigger.

We thought we could go further,
we go deeper, we do more.

But we just wouldn't know

until we recover the results from Hubble.

So work pretty much stopped at that point.

Chimp and the Los Angeles Times.

NASA had to focus on Hubble.

But I think the point I want to make

is that NASA prides itself
in responding to challenges

and overcoming the challenges.

I was the telescope scientist on Hubble.

It was a great responsibility
that we have to now figure out

how to make this telescope work.

The first solution was to suggest

replacing the camera
with one that had optics

to correct the fault, but a
different solution was needed

for the other science instruments.

Put it in a box that had little arms

that extended up and put
an optics in the light path

that would correct the other instruments.

It had to be precisely
located, perfectly spaced.

Lift off of the space shuttle Endeavor

on an ambitious mission to
the Hubble space telescope.

To have that done in
space is amazingly hard.

It is a gamble.

Hello Houston.

We are ready, let's go fix this thing.

Because you're dealing with
something that it has to work.

Houston Endeavor.

Why don't you go ahead and open the doors,

yes, please.

Just do it nice and easy

It would have been very much harder

to move forward on JWST
if Hubble could not be fixed.

Okay, let's watch what happens now.

I think everybody would have been well,

that was a failed experiment.

Okay, I'll push it out to you.

So, there was a awful lot riding on that.

Looks like it's in there.

Well, I think we better
use this beautiful thing.

Looking forward to seeing the pictures.

Right there!
Oh!

Hallelujah, this is a magnificent.

This is what we've been waiting for.

The images Hubble sent back

enthralled the world

and provided us with a staggering look

at how the universe itself was farmed.

After the Big Bang the universe grew,

but there were no stars in it

for probably a hundred million years.

It was just gas,

cold gas.

The gas might start
to condense a little bit

and we start to form a
star in the middle of it.

And the stars then burst
forth out of the gas and dust.

And the light now make
these wonderful nebulae.

We see all these wonderful colors

that come out of this hot gas.

Hydrogen is nice red.

Oxygen, the green and blue.

What we're really
seeing is the birth of stars.

This is really fundamental stuff.

And the stars themselves, as a form,

just to eventually build up these galaxies.

Those images are amazing.

That basically, I think sealed it.

Now, people were willing to think about

what they would do for the future.

The space telescope brings
completely new knowledge.

With telescope, size matters.

The 92 inch telescope mirror

has been finally buffed and polished.

Hubble, even though its
mirror was state-of-the-art

for the time, it's 2.4 meters in diameter,

but that's pretty modest
by ground-based standards.

It limits what the telescope can do.

With the space telescope,

will be able to look much
further back into time.

I wanted to go back and
look to the very beginnings

of the universe, when you
start seeing the first galaxies

and stars being formed.

The space telescope
will find many new things.

We'll find exciting things.

Hubble can't quite get there.

The dream of seeing back to the formation

of the universe came a step closer in 1996.

I'm proud to announce

the next generation of space telescope.

Named after the Apollo-era
NASA administrator,

the James Webb Space
Telescope, or JWST for short,

demanded an astronomical
leap in technology.

JWST is gonna look at
things we've never seen before.

We hope to be able to figure out

how we got here in the universe.

Imagine that; that is mind blowing.

Committee have said, we
need to see all the way back

as far as we can,

to see those first galaxies being born.

The big question first though,
was how do we do that?

It was obvious we needed 10 inventions

and we didn't have them.

But meanwhile, Hubble was
still taking spectacular images.

We have one image,

which we have taken 2 million
seconds worth of exposures.

Thousands of galaxies, as they would look

8 billion years or so ago.

We look at the colors.

We can actually tell
how far away from us it is.

You really are going back in time.

9 billion years.

Back a little more than 10 billion years,

11 billion years.

That is absolutely amazing,
that we as human beings,

looking back through 97% of all time.

And then finally, we go
back to 13.3 billion years ago.

We have found this one
galaxy just 400 million years

after the Big Bang.

But one galaxy does not a story make.

No, there's still more to see.

You know, the age of the world

is still a little further away.

We've got to keep going on the ship.

There's a simple reason why Hubble

can't see the earliest galaxies.

They're invisible.

Space has been expanding

since the beginning of the universe and so,

light gets stretched out.

And so this light that was emitted

over 13.5 billion years ago,

finally arrives here as infrared light.

Infrared light is heat radiation.

It comes out of objects like us.

We're all giving out heat,

but if we turn all the lights off,

you wouldn't see us in the visible,

but you would see it in the infrared.

But harnessing infrared light

has been challenging
astronomers for decades.

You're trying to use an infrared telescope

from the ground, you're extremely limited.

You take an infrared camera and you put it

in an empty glass, it
sees right through it.

Put water in that glass
and you won't see anything.

Water absorbs infrared light

and our atmosphere is full of water.

So, you know, if you
want to do really, you know,

intensive infrared astronomy,
you want to be in space.

And this is exactly

what the JWST team planned to do,

put the largest infrared
telescope ever built into space.

The instruction book said,
build us an infrared telescope.

That means it has to be cold.

Because this is an infrared observatory,

we're very sensitive
to tiny amounts of heat.

We're sensitive to like,

the resting energy of a body of a flea.

We very immediately recognized

that telescope close to Earth will be warm.

The Earth is so big and so close,

that it's shining heat
radiation in all the time.

So the logical end point of this

is to put a telescope a long
way away from the Earth,

in what we call the Lagrange Points.

Known as L2,

it's far away from the heat of Earth

and has an orbit that would keep JWST

pointing out into deep space.

But at L2, JWST is
in the direct line of fire

of an even bigger source of heat.

The sun is always hitting.

It gets to plus 200 degrees Fahrenheit,

which is very close to
the boiling point of water.

To try to cool the telescope
down in proximity to the sun,

that's like trying to keep a beer cold

next to a blast furnace.

We had to invent something
that would keep it really cold

and basically, we do it
by never let it see the sun.

We can see every star in the universe

and there's only one star
we'll never look at, ours.

We won't look at our sun
because if we do we'll melt.

So we have developed a
deployable sunshield technology

that's never been done in space before.

Five layers of precisely engineered,

thermal insulating materials

create this incredible component.

Between each layer is a
vacuum of empty space.

The space can not conduct heat

and the sun's rays are
bounced away from the layers

until almost none of it remains.

But it's not just the sunshield
that's taking technologies

to new heights on this telescope.

The mirror is another game changer.

Hubble has a single piece
of 2.4 meter glass as a lens,

and it sits in a can and
then goes into its orbit

and does its mission.

Now, imagine you're the
generation of engineers

that gets told, "not good enough".

I can't handle just one, 2.4
meter diameter piece of glass.

I want a six and a half meter optic.

But as an engineer, you
know that the top of the rocket's

only five meters wide.

So, they basically told
you build something bigger

than what you can fit in a rocket.

And then we say, okay, that's really hard.

So, we put out the call and
engineers around the country

said, well, I can do you that.

And we said, okay, prove it to me.

And most of them
couldn't, but nevertheless,

we got one design that could.

Hexagonal in shape,

made up of 18 different segments,

the mirror is almost 15 times bigger

than Hubble's and it's designed to fold.

We build a telescope on the ground.

We align it, we test it.

We say we got a telescope that works.

And then we bust it apart.

We bust it apart, we fold it up

and we have to actually rebuild it,

maybe a half a million
miles from the Earth,

robotically in space.

That is a challenge.

With that, we started on a path

of a decade long of invention.

So that really was
the start of the mission,

but that also was the
start of its problems.

And the reason was they said

it was going to cost a billion dollars.

Nobody believed it was
going to cost a billion dollars.

But we all wanted to go
forward and people did.

And we say, okay, we'll try,

we'll do our best and see how it comes out.

It's been three years since
JWST was announced.

Budgeted at a billion dollars,

the build was due to have started.

We had a very eager and
demanding boss, Dan Golden,

and he was really hopeful
that we could do this quicker

if we would really try,

but it's easier to command something

than to achieve it.

It didn't take long before people realize

a billion dollars is not
going to be enough.

It was just too little money
for a project of this scale.

We were discovering that
this is harder and that is harder

and this takes longer
and that takes longer.

Things weren't going as
smoothly as one would like.

This was a challenge to our engineers,

to think of how they could
produce the technology

that the scientists needed.

For years, things were done
to keep the project moving,

but it, you know, had many problems.

In 2003, at nearly five times

the original budget and nearly
five years behind schedule,

the team has not finalized designs.

But by 2004, the design
process is finally finished

and the build begins.

Thousands of components begin manufacture,

from the largest scientific instruments,

down to the smallest of screws.

JWST will be equipped with
four main science instruments

that will be able to image
the universe in stereo

throughout the entire light spectrum

at resolutions never seen
before in a space telescope.

The spacecraft will be protected

by the enormous tennis
court-sized sunshield.

This alone will take six
years to manufacture.

But the biggest engineering feat for JWST

is going to be the
centerpiece, the mirrors.

One of the hardest things
engineers have had to do

on Webb is with the mirrors.

The mirror is made out of beryllium

and beryllium is one of those
early elements that, you know,

on a periodic table, that
is really strong and stable

at cryogenic temperatures,

but beryllium doesn't
reflect infrared light that well.

So, we coat the mirror in gold

'cause gold reflects infrared
and it looks gorgeous, right,

but we didn't build it to look gorgeous.

It's actually functional.

Even before it gets to space,

the mirror is well-traveled.

It's this epic journey from
digging beryllium powder

out of a mine in Utah,

coarse machining it in Ohio and an Alabama,

coating it in gold in New Jersey,

then to polishing it here in California,

to putting it in a thermal
chamber in Alabama.

These mirrors got a lot
of frequent flyer miles.

It took eight years just to
make the mirrors on Webb.

The perfection of our
surface is so accurate,

it's like only 15 nanometers of error.

What's a nanometer, right?

You know, a nanometer,
it's the size of a bacteria.

That's so precise that I
could find the heat signature

of a bumblebee on the moon

if I was using this telescope from Earth.

Which means in our case, we can find a star

that a photon came off
13.5 billion years ago.

Just incredible.

When the mirrors were done,

it was a wonderful accomplishment,

but then they weren't just done.

They were done as 18
individual mirrors, right?

Then we had to put the
optics together in an assembly.

That would be another three, four years.

It's like building a Swiss watch,

where you're putting all
the little pieces together

that have to work so precisely,

and we're doing it on a scale of something

that's 80 feet long by 40
feet wide by 40 feet high.

The sun shield has been

a tremendous engineering challenge.

The sun shield is made up a five layers

of a material called Kapton.

Each of those layers is a little bit less

than the thickness of a human hair.

They're very fragile.

If you walk underneath them,

just the movement of the air from your body

will cause them to move.

We need to move methodically,

move deliberately and take
the time we need to do it.

You run the risk of failure.

There's always a risk.

Take a look at what happened with Hubble.

We had all these new technologies coming up

and we learned as we went
along how much this would cost.

Seven years into the build,

and the challenges for
the team were mounting.

We knew we weren't going
to meet our launch date

and we're going to cost more.

It is expensive.

Webb realized that it was going to take

significantly longer to
complete the mission.

The launch date had been slipping

and Congress had been noticing that.

So they're going,

we have to send more and
more money to this project.

Certainly, it looks foolish to keep asking

for more money all the time.

Space may be a vacuum,
but it doesn't take place in one.

By which I mean, politics
always plays a role.

It was impossible.

The James Webb Space
Telescope is another case study

of NASA's mismanagement
of a flagship mission,

where original cost and scheduled estimates

are grossly understated.

One of the committees
said, ah, let's kill it.

The project execution is
a litany of missed signals

and deferred work.

Whoa, that just came out of the blue.

Incompetence and mismanagement on a scale

such as we are talking about today.

There was not enough money
to do what needed to be done

when it needed to be done.

It's not a favor to the taxpayer

and it's not a favor.

It's just killed.

To the American space program.

So that was really a rough time.

We're not just talking about
balancing the budget here.

We're talking about having
a viable space program

for the United States of America.

I don't think that we can
just have three priorities.

The program was on the rocks.

We at NASA, recognize that we made

your already difficult task of
funding important programs

in these distressed fiscal times,

even more difficult through our poor,

past performance on JWST.

Folks were sort of unhappy
depressed about, you know,

the fact that this has happened.

Angry that it happened as well.

All those emotions played a role.

I've learned not to take it personally.

You always have a different
perspective about something

when you're an insider
compared to an outsider

and I can understand why people were upset,

especially in the political arena,

where that's a whole
different objective than like,

actually fixing a problem with,
oh NASA's got this program

that it turned out it's harder
and it's going to take longer

and be more expensive than anybody

wanted.

We're going to have to defund

all of that great STEM program

and all of this education
because of the $7 billion overrun

that we're talking about today.

Honestly, it didn't hurt
my feelings that much,

that people were saying
that we were lousy at our jobs

or something, 'cause I knew we weren't.

I'm ignoring the fact
that this cost overrun

may cost us that program.

The scientific investment in
this mission is decades long.

It's been a part of
almost all of my career.

I'd been on this project a long time.

I started in April of 1997.

I actually got involved in it in 1995.

I actually started working
on James Webb 32 years ago.

You know, I have 24 years.

I know people that have 27.

We're going to see this to the end

because we have a duty to do so.

We all know of Hubble
and the amazing things

that it has done.

You immediately go into fighting mode.

Launching James Webb
will demonstrate again,

our leadership in science and technology.

That was the important
thing, not to give up.

People get involved now,

in a way that they never did before.

There was this groundswell of support.

This is becoming crucial to
have these results out there.

School children were writing in saying, ah,

we want JWST, this is going to be,

you know, an amazing mission.

And here they were being
told that it may just die.

Orange honeycomb
shooting through outer space.

This telescope is really important.

It gives us our origins

and it tells us something
about where we came from.

You are a carbon based life form.

You breathe oxygen.

You use the materials and the minerals

that are on our planet to survive.

None of that existed until a star formed.

We only had elements one and two

and that fusion reactor fused the way

hydrogen and helium as a fuel

and it built up a periodic table,

all the way up to like iron.

And then those stars exploded

and they created golds and
platinums and all these elements.

We're going to see how that happened.

So why would we stop that?

We're the generation that
has taken a leap frog step.

So I'm proud of that, right,
and that sets us up right,

for generations to come.

School children across the world

wrote to Congress,

urging them to continue with JWST

and late 2011,

Congress agrees to
continue funding the mission.

That coming together of public support

played a huge role in getting
Congress to change its mind.

Additional money was granted to JWST,

bringing its budget to $8 billion.

The launch was scheduled for 2018.

The draw of the science was so strong,

so compelling, that
people realize it's worth it.

Having had that experiences was good.

Let's just get to work.

Yeah, what's so technically
challenging about Webb?

There's a whole bunch
of things that individually,

are very hard.

JWST has 155 motors.

We have 1,300 feet of cabling,

1,600 cables,

1,600 electrical connectors,

26 miles of wire harnessing.

All this has to be tested.

It's really important that
we prove it's gonna work.

Humankind has never been
further than 250,000 miles

off of our planet.

The backside of the moon,

the furthest a human has ever left Earth.

We're going four times further than that.

It's going a million miles away, right?

So, nobody's going out there to fix it.

There's no Hubble repairmen, right?

So, you have no
choice, but to get it right.

There's many a slip
between the cup and the lip.

For the first time ever,

the 18 individual segments
are assembled together

to hopefully, make one
huge optically perfect mirror.

It went through vibration testing

to simulate the vibration
that it sees in the rocket.

This is the most violent part of the ride,

is that ride in the rocket.

All testing is stressful.

When the mirror is shaken and vibrated,

will something breaks when this happens?

So, it's a very stressful moment.

When it went through its acoustics test,

when they finished up, they did find

some loose nuts and screws

laying on the floor below it.

Let's take a pause and
let's figure out what's wrong.

We traced it back to
basically, a human error.

People are going to make mistakes

and you have to try to
catch all those mistakes

and occasionally,
something will slip through.

The dangers of human error

with thrown into sharp
relief in November, 2020.

An entirely different mission
took off from French Guyana,

carrying two Earth imaging satellites.

Eight minutes into its flight,

the upper stage began
to veer out of control

and the mission was declared a failure.

The cause was traced to cables
plugged into the wrong ports,

human error.

But it's just, it's a lessons learned that,

you know, when you have
something as complex as this,

it's not just the hard things,

but you have to pay attention to every,

the most simple thing that you
would think is we do every single day.

You don't want to mess those things up.

No, we made sure that the external pressure

that was on the project
did not affect the engineers.

By 2018, the individual
parts of the telescope

have all been completed.

But spread across the United States,

they have to be packed up
to be assembled in California,

a nerve wracking process
for the delicate mirror.

For the very first time,

the James Webb Space
Telescope is assembled as one unit.

When the mirrors were assembled

and then the instruments attached,

that was an absolute crucial step.

Three,

two,

one.

We've been doing launch simulations.

So, we pretend we actually launched.

Lift off.

Lift off, 30 minutes top of the hour.

We're launching into space.

This is risky.

After we launch,

our solar array comes out

so we can get solar power to our batteries.

Several hours later,

our antenna comes out that we
communicate to the Earth with.

From there, we have a complicated

and very choreographed dance of deployment.

We deploy the tower.

That's when it gets really exciting.

We deploy the sun shield.

Pallets fold down.

We have about 107 release mechanisms

that release the sun shield.

Get pulled out, arms
push out the sun shield.

Then they get tension,
just like you would tension

up a sail on a sailboat.

Now, the passive cooling

that's really going to start
dropping the temperature.

The sun is hitting at
+200 degrees Fahrenheit

and on the other side
of this five layer umbrella,

it gets to -388.

We create a 600 degree
Fahrenheit differential,

which would be like putting
sunscreen on at 1.2 million SPF.

Then we start deploying the optics.

There are two wings
with three mirror segments

on each side.

They have to fold in and click into place.

That, of course, is a crucial step.

At that point, secondary
mirror has to pop out.

So it's that point where we
have a complete telescope.

All the mirror segments, 18 of them.

Are released and we can now
begin to move them around,

come into focus.

James Webb is so powerful that sure,

few hours is going to be better

than the whole 2 million seconds

we put together with Hubble.

This is such a game changer.

This is going to see things
that we couldn't imagine.

Once we get that deployed,

a very exciting moment,

'cause that will be
really seeing the fruits

of all your efforts

and seeing those first images,

we will then take a sigh
of relief and say we did it.

After all these years, we got it to work.

We've made an astonishing machine

that was a fantasy 23 years ago.

We're going to be able to
rewrite our science books

with the knowledge that we're
going to get from James Webb.

It has the ability to create
a global understanding

of who we are and where
we are in a universe.

Webb, in my opinion, is
a technological wonder.

It is a testimony to the ingenuity

and creativity of the human mind.

We'll just demonstrate
that if you put your mind to it

and you stick the course,

you can achieve astonishing things.

In late 2021,

the completed telescope is
packed up for the last time

and starts his million
mile journey to space,

with a long earthbound trip from California

to the launch pad in French Guyana.

All being well, it will launch into space

and began its voyage of discovery.

Our future generations will be able to say,

look at what those people did way back then

and how they worked out this amazing story

about the beginning of everything.

I think that's my job that I'm proud to do.

��moov