A space telescope launch + Alvin submersible check-up

[MUSIC PLAYING] FLORA LICHTMAN: Hi. I’m Flora, and you’re listening to Science Friday. Big news. New Space Telescope is dropping. The Nancy Grace Roman Scope is scheduled to launch at the end of August, amazingly, for a space mission ahead of schedule. The telescope will rest about a million miles from Earth at Lagrange Point 2, where the sun and Earth’s gravity balance out.

Here to give me the lowdown on what the telescope is, what scientists hope to do with it, and the backstory of the mission is Jackie Townsend. She’s project manager for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission. Hey, Jackie.

JACKIE TOWNSEND: Hi, Flora. Thanks for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Thank you for being here. How excited are you right now?

JACKIE TOWNSEND: Oh, very excited.

[LAUGHING]

In our team, we all talk about the various analogies. I’ve decided it’s closer to watching your toddler take their very first steps. It’s been all of this work to get this far, and it’s about to take its steps and launch into orbit, and then deliver some truly amazing science.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And then it has a whole lifetime ahead of it.

JACKIE TOWNSEND: Exactly.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Introduce us to this telescope. How does the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope fit in with the family tree of space telescopes and love, like Hubble and JWST?

JACKIE TOWNSEND: So Roman is a survey machine. It was designed to image a large fraction of the night sky. We’ll do things with it, like create a 3D map of our own Milky Way Galaxy, as well as image billions of other galaxies stretching back towards the Big Bang. And in doing so, it’s going to create humanity’s largest catalog of the night sky at this depth.

FLORA LICHTMAN: If I opened the telescope catalog, what are the special features on this scope that would make an astronomer want to add it to their cart?

JACKIE TOWNSEND: So Roman does two things exceptionally well. The first thing is we have an incredibly wide field of view based on our 18 state of the art 4K by 4K detectors, making it a 300 megapixel camera, 200 to 300 times bigger than what Hubble could do. But there’s a second part of what we do that’s amazing. And that is Roman is the most stable telescope that NASA has ever built. And that means that it can maintain our exquisite focus, even as we rapidly scan across the sky and then stop on a dime in order to take the next image.

So when you add those two things together, Roman can image the sky about 1,000 times faster than Hubble. So–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow.

JACKIE TOWNSEND: –it’s not that we’re doing competitive science with Hubble or doing Hubble or web science better. They peer deeper and in a more focused way on specific targets, whereas Roman is going to look for the things that go bump in the night.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Is there specific scientific subject matter that this scope is designed to interrogate?

JACKIE TOWNSEND: Yeah, our surveys are designed to explore science ideas that need a large enough sample for meaningful statistics. So those are dark energy. That’s what is driving the expansion rate of the universe. Dark matter. That is what mass explains the structure and dynamics that we see in how galaxies interact with each other. And the third is exoplanets. Human beings have identified about 6,000 of them to date. Roman is expected to come back with 50,000, up to perhaps 100,000 exoplanets that Hubble or Webb might be asked to follow up on.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Is Roman going to actually use its big camera to take pictures of those exoplanets, or will it infer that they’re there?

JACKIE TOWNSEND: Excellent question. So the survey that I just talked about will be inferring that they are there. It’s not going to be imaging them. However, we are also carrying something called a coronagraph, which is a technology demonstration instrument that was developed out at our partners at JPL, out in California. And that has special masks and data processing so that it can actually dim the light of the primary star, so that you can see, in a couple of pixels, the light from the planet that’s next to it.

Now, it’s a technology demonstration, so it’s the first time that we’ve actually tried to do this in a system on orbit. So it’s not going to be right out of the gate. We’re going to go be imaging Earth-like planets around other stars. But we are going to demonstrate the ability to dim down the light from that primary star by 6 to 8 orders of magnitude. So–

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s cool.

JACKIE TOWNSEND: –it’s going to do some amazing things.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I’m surprised, amazed that the telescope is on target to launch early. That seems unusual in the space missions world. Am I right?

JACKIE TOWNSEND: You are correct. We are the first time that a flagship mission– that’s what we call these big great observatories like Hubble or Webb more recently. We’re the first time that we have delivered ahead of schedule, and we’re actually coming in under budget.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Jackie, you’re the project manager. What is your secret?

JACKIE TOWNSEND: So delivering ahead of schedule and under budget means essentially that every team member made really good decisions day after day for more than a decade. Those decisions were often to just give a little extra bit to notice when a teammate was struggling with something and offer to help, or to stay maybe 20 minutes extra tonight to position the morning shift to get something done sooner or more efficiently, and more often, to double check this week to make sure everything is done that needs to be done to be ready for next week’s work.

Because sometimes we can pull that work in early, or it just makes sure that we will continue to execute on time. There were some occasions that required something heroic, and I can give examples of that if you’re interested.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I love a heroic story. Yeah, tell us.

JACKIE TOWNSEND: Well, so our project was baselined, which in NASA terms means we were given the set of requirements, and the set of money and the schedule. And that key decision point meeting happened in February of 2020. And I’ll bet your listeners remember–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Perfect timing.

JACKIE TOWNSEND: –in March of 2020, we all went home for the pandemic. And more significant to us was the supply chain problems that came with the pandemic. So if you wanted to buy plastic, if you wanted to buy by wires, there was a kind of a nine-month period in the early days of the pandemic where you just couldn’t get those things. And this was at the peak of when we needed to be buying these parts.

So we all went home, and our resources people built a system to track all of those parts every day as we were buying them, and knowing immediately when there was a block. And then we pivot. Let’s go find another source. Let’s change our integration flow if we have to because that part is now coming in six months later. That ability to stay really engaged with what is going on, and in tune with the moment by moment flow, and then also not be fist clenching your plan, because it’s not going to go, you have to be ready to adapt.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s a good life lesson. Don’t hang on too tight to your plan.

JACKIE TOWNSEND: Make good plans and then plan to adapt.

FLORA LICHTMAN: [LAUGHS] I read that the mirror was actually manufactured for a spy satellite. Is that true, and did that help?

JACKIE TOWNSEND: That’s a great example of balancing constraints. So yes, we got the mirror and several associated parts to go with it, but it was not designed to operate, say, cold enough to make infrared science easy. It wasn’t designed to reflect exactly at the wavelengths that we were planning to make our observations. So it was useful to get this, but we also had to strip it down, re-polish it, figure it to our needs. So it was a lot of work.

However, once we knew we were going to be receiving this mirror, it really necked down the trade space so we could make really good decisions early about how we were going to design and build this telescope. If we had not received that, we might have gone longer before we necked down and made the tough choices to say, this is what this observatory is going to do, and this is how we’re going to build it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Is it stressful to launch the telescope? What’s that for you?

JACKIE TOWNSEND: So I have had the privilege of working a couple of the Hubble servicing missions in the past. And I can tell you, it is utterly thrilling, that moment, and also a little bit terrifying, because launching is among the biggest risks that we take. So it’s like a roller coaster. It’s thrilling, and terrifying, and exciting, and wonderful, and amazing all at the same time.

FLORA LICHTMAN: After it launches, how long till it’s up and running and we start getting data?

JACKIE TOWNSEND: So the transition into science operations variations happens probably at the first of the calendar year. So the first images will likely come down in December, and then we transition into real time science data being downlinked and made available to the public daily in January.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I can’t wait. Thanks, Jackie.

JACKIE TOWNSEND: Me too.

[LAUGHING]

FLORA LICHTMAN: Jackie Townsend is Project Manager for the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission. After the break, from exploring deep space to exploring the deep sea. Stay with us.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

If you own a car, you probably the headache of keeping up with scheduled maintenance, inspections, routine care. But what if that vehicle isn’t driving to the store, but bringing people thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean? The famous deep sea submersible Alvin recently underwent a scheduled refitting and re-certification process and has returned to service. Here to tell us about that deep ocean oil change is Anthony Tarantino. He’s an electrical engineer and program manager for the Alvin Group. Anthony, welcome.

ANTHONY TARANTINO: Hi, Flora. Great to be here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Thank you for joining us. What does it mean to be re-certified?

ANTHONY TARANTINO: The vehicle itself is owned by the Office of Naval Research, and the National Science Foundation essentially allows us to operate and pays our bills. But as a vehicle that’s owned by the Navy, part of the rules are to make sure that every five years, we come into Woods Hole, we take the vehicle completely apart, do a structural check of the personnel sphere, and the frame and all the other associated systems.

And then when we put it all back together again, there’s a Navy observer who comes with us. We do a deep dive, and we’re essentially re-certified to dive to our max operating depth without operational limits.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You said you have to take Alvin fully apart. Do you mean fully apart, like every bolt and screw?

ANTHONY TARANTINO: Yeah, we exactly have to do that. We literally take the vehicle completely apart, piece by piece, [LAUGHS] Because you can’t really inspect certain parts of it if it’s assembled. So we don’t stop until it’s a bare frame, bare sphere and a pile of components on the shelves.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Are there parts that you automatically swap out, like my air filter?

ANTHONY TARANTINO: Yeah. And that honestly constitutes a big part of the work. We have a lot of filters, mostly oil filters, not so much air filters. But we do have a life support system, as well, that has oxygen filters. So we swap out some things like that, a lot of O-rings. We do actually do an oil change. But the majority of the parts and components are reused because they’re durable, and that’s the goal when we start to design a vehicle like Alvin and subsystems. We want to make sure that they’re durable and that they’re going to last for a long time.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you ever do any upgrades like, now’s the time to put in that better stereo system?

ANTHONY TARANTINO: [LAUGHS] We always are doing upgrades. This overhaul was what we would consider a regular and scheduled maintenance period. But the last two overhauls we did, one completed in 2022 and the other completed in 2013, were actually two stages of a major upgrade to the vehicle where we replaced the actual personnel sphere. It’s where the people go basically. So in 2013, we replaced the sphere and we replaced a lot of other components.

The next overhaul, which completed in 2022, we completed that major upgrade, replaced all of those legacy 4,500-meter-rated components with 6,500-meter components, and eventually got re-certified to operate at 6,500 meters. So that’s a big jump for us. Typically, during a normal and regular overhaul, we do minor upgrades, not quite as big as what we did over the last two.

But yeah, we’re always looking for ways to improve. We want to keep the vehicle fresh. We want to keep it as cutting edge, if you will, as it can be. And we want to be able to serve the scientific community as best we can.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you have a wish list, Anthony, like, oh, next time we do a major upgrade, I really want to add this awesome robotic arm or whatever it is?

ANTHONY TARANTINO: Well, as the technical program manager, a part of my job is to look ahead and see what we can do to make a bigger improvements. And one of the big things that we’re looking at for the next overhaul is to install a better energy storage system, so better batteries. And personally speaking, I would love to just reconfigure the entire vehicle and make it a lot more hydrodynamic, make it a little bit smaller, and get rid of some of the constraints that we had to deal with because of the fact that we did a two-stage upgrade to 6,500 meters.

So my biggest wish would be to be able to just take all the components, get a brand new frame, and reconfigure the whole thing, and make it look a little bit different than it does today.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It must be very cool to pilot a vessel in these unexplored parts of the world that you built yourself with your own hands.

ANTHONY TARANTINO: The best part is really working with the people. We consider ourselves stewards of a very special piece of gear, and we’re entrusted with a lot of responsibility to keep people healthy and safe and to do great science. So that means a lot to me, and that’s what I’m passionate about, as opposed to working for-profit company, making somebody else money. I think this is so much better, being able to say that at the end of the day or at the end of my career, maybe we were able to help humanity in some way.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Anthony Tarantino is Program Manager for the Alvin Group at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Thank you for being with me today.

ANTHONY TARANTINO: Oh, thanks. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Before we go, I need your help. I spend so much of my day in front of screens, like many of you, perhaps. And I want to know, do you have a creative solution for getting yourself moving, for interrupting the scroll cycle? And how did you hit screen time rock bottom? Call us and tell us your story. Look, I about the app blockers. I want your most creative hack for getting off your device.

Jumping jacks, off-camera meetings, I don’t know what it is. You call us and tell us. 877-4SCI-FRI is our number. That’s 877-4SCI-FRI. This episode was produced by Charles Bergquist. And if you appreciate Science Friday’s deep dives, please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts, even if that’s at the bottom of the sea. I’m Flora Lichtman. We’ll see you soon.

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