2023 Guest Night
The James Webb Space Telescope and Beyond
The James Webb Space Telescope and Beyond
Please note that the Saginaw Bay Yacht Club is on the east side of the Saginaw River, 2313 Weedock Highway, Essexville.
Lee Feinberg
Lee Feinberg has been the Optical Telescope Element (OTE) Manager and optics lead for the James Webb Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland since 2002. Earlier in his career, Lee was the Assistant Chief for Technology in the Instrument Systems and Technology Division at Goddard. Prior to that, Lee held several roles as part of the optical team that repaired the Hubble Space Telescope on Serving Mission-1. Lee was the Space Telescope Imaging Spectroscope Instrument Manager on Servicing Mission-2 and he co-led the concept study for Hubble Wide Field Camera-3. Lee was a member of the Science and Technology Definition teams that led to the recently started Habitable Worlds Observatory and he is a member of the Roman Space Telescope Standing Review Board. His research focuses on large and ultra-stable telescopes. Lee is a Fellow of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) and a NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Senior Fellow. Lee has received numerous NASA awards including the 2022 NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Goddard Moe Schneebaum Memorial Award. Lee has a B.S. in Optics from University of Rochester and a M.S. in Applied Physics from Johns Hopkins University.
Abstract:
After two decades of development, the James Webb Space Telescope launched on December 25th, 2021. This revolutionary telescope is the first ever 6.5 meter segmented telescope in space that was the work of 1000’s of engineers, technicians and scientists. Once in space, there were over 50 successful deployments followed by the first ever alignment of a segmented telescope in space and instrument commissioning. Building this telescope required developing 10 different technologies, a new way to do integration and testing of large telescopes, and a remote commissioning which improved the initial alignment of mirrors by a factor of 1,000,000. This talk will review the history of the JWST telescope development through testing and on-orbit commissioning including the performance and then discuss how the lessons from Webb are already informing the next NASA great observatory.
After two decades of development, the James Webb Space Telescope launched on December 25th, 2021. This revolutionary telescope is the first ever 6.5 meter segmented telescope in space that was the work of 1000’s of engineers, technicians and scientists. Once in space, there were over 50 successful deployments followed by the first ever alignment of a segmented telescope in space and instrument commissioning. Building this telescope required developing 10 different technologies, a new way to do integration and testing of large telescopes, and a remote commissioning which improved the initial alignment of mirrors by a factor of 1,000,000. This talk will review the history of the JWST telescope development through testing and on-orbit commissioning including the performance and then discuss how the lessons from Webb are already informing the next NASA great observatory.