Ali Kazmaz
Welcome to Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.

As part of our series focusing on the James Webb Space Telescope, our conversations aim to shed light on the contributions of organizations and the people.

I am Ali Kazmaz, a student at Rice University pursuing a degree in architecture.

For this episode, I had an opportunity to speak with Mei-Li Hey from Northrop Grumman.

Mei-Li is a mechanical design engineer who worked on the James Webb project. I wanted to speak to her about her role as a test engineer intern when she first started at Northrop Grumman and how this led to her working on the project full-time, and also to understand the collaborations of different engineers that brought their projects to fruition.

We began our conversation with her telling us about the internship first. Enjoy listening!

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Mei-Li Hey
I started as an intern the summer of 2016. I didn’t know what role I was going to play, let alone the program. I think I really lucked out with getting put on James Webb. Test engineers, they’re in charge of reading the drawings, and then writing procedures that will help the technicians who are the ones actually performing the work in, you know, exactly how they’re going to do it. I mean, these procedures, say down to like, take this nut, and this bolt and this washer, put them together to attach these two pieces, right? So, test engineers write those directions.

Ali
Sort of like Lego prescriptions. Very specific.

Mei-Li
Yes, exactly. Right. Test engineers are the ones who are doing the authoring. So, they do a lot of technical writing. And I thought that was cool. But as I was doing it, I liked the drawings. When I was reading the drawings, I was like, who’s making these drawings, because that seems like fun. They’re the ones who actually have some freedom, and they have some, you know, creative outlet, I guess, and how they’re going to design this whole thing. I was able to meet one of the managers of the mechanical design engineers, said, Hey, I’m a test engineer. But I would love to learn a little bit more about your group. And he was the manager of mechanical ground systems engineering. So, I spent the last maybe couple of weeks at my internship, learning just a little bit about that. And so, then when I got hired full-time, they knew that I liked the design aspect better so they put me straight into design engineering, where then I had a whole another world to learn. And it takes a little bit longer to learn that design part, but I like it a lot better.

Ali
When you were an intern, they were working on the Webb, and when you got hired, they were still working on the Webb, right?

Mei-Li
Yeah, absolutely. So, Webb was a very long program. We started, by we, I would say the company started proposing Webb in 1996. And my company officially won Webb in 2001. The original launch date was 2011. And we were exactly 10 years late. We doubled schedule. So, I did not join until like I said, 2016 was my internship. And then 2017 is when I started full-time. And so, I was on the program full time for the last 25% of the program, only. There were a few people on the program that had been there for the entirety of their career, they’d been there for 25 years, working on just this program. But for the most part, people’s lives change, and you have people cycle through I think, on average, this program’s retention was much better than most because it was a very exciting program. I joined at the very tail end.

Ali
You said, you were very interested in the creative process and how they were actually making the drawings instead of like the assembly of them. Could you maybe talk about how you merge this creativity, science and engineering?

Mei-Li
Sure, yeah. I think that design engineering is really the best way to do that. You do need to lean on creative skills, but you also need to have very strong quantitative skills to do the engineering portion of it. But I guess another unique part of joining the program when I did was that at this point, we were pretty much only addressing things that had gone wrong. So unplanned events. Like we had lots of parts that didn’t fit or things that broke, and we needed to go fix and they weren’t in the plan to go do these things. So, you needed to come up with pretty creative solutions. I mean, like one example is the bus of the James Webb.

There’s three main sub-assemblies for the Webb. And you mentioned one of them. It’s the sunshield. I feel like that’s the most iconic, just because it’s giant and shiny, and there’s nothing like it. And then of course, there’s the telescope part, which is the shiny gold mirrored telescope. And then under the sunshield on the other side of the sunshield is the least exciting subsystems called the bus and it’s just the big box that has all of the electrical components inside it. It’s really what runs the entire telescope is this big box. It’s called the bus.

There’s a ton of electrical components inside and one of them broke very late in the game. And we had to basically pull off the panels of the bus, taking apart the cube. So, taking up off one side of the cube, and going in there to try and fix the electrical component that broke. But obviously, none of that work is planned. So, figuring out how you’re going to take apart something that was never meant to be taken apart, and then put it back together, it takes a whole lot of creativity and equipment. And we needed to end up making a slew of pieces of equipment to take off this panel. And like access is really small. So, we had to make specialized tools that’s going to go in and reach and just fix this little component, come out and like thread the needle through these things, right. So that’s where creativity comes in. Because you have to think outside of the box. The only solutions that are going to work are going to be ones that are outside the box. But I mean, luckily, it’s not just you, it’s going to be you along with a bunch of other engineers, and you will stand on the floor and look at the problem. You have to come up with a solution, or plans.

Ali
How does that collaborative process work, like when working with a bunch of people that have different ideas of how to solve this, you know, how does that work?

Mei-Li
Yeah, it’s sometimes difficult, and especially in those very, very tense moments, it can get heated because like something just broke. So, tensions are already high. I think that what was very cool about the James Webb is that everybody who was working on it, we all had a shared mission, we want to get this thing off the ground. And I think that, you know, that is a very united feeling. Everybody’s doing what they’re doing or saying what they’re saying, because they have the same goal in mind. So, kind of have to keep that in mind if you start disagreeing on something. But the engineering process helps a lot, if you follow it.

You have systems engineers that will help you define requirements. Requirements are a very big deal. And, you know, if you say, well, this electrical component broke, you’ll have somebody that says, well, like, what do you mean, it broke? Like, what doesn’t work about it? And you have to then go to the requirements about what working means, is it meeting a certain threshold and meeting a certain requirement? So similar if like, okay, it breaks, it’s not meeting a certain requirement so how do you go and fix that requirement? And so, some people might offer a solution? You know, I might have an idea and say, well, I think, you know, I think we should rip apart the bus and take off this part and replace it with a brand-new part. Somebody else might say, well, okay, we don’t need a new part. We just need to fix this one piece, and then it meets the requirements again. Okay, well, technically, they’re right. As long as the requirements are met, you move on.

I think like the process to come to a solution is defining your requirements, brainstorming ideas, and then choosing the path of least resistance. Those are the three steps, I would say. And then everybody understands that that’s the engineering process. So, there could be debate about details and everything, but you define your requirements, you brainstorm ideas, and then you choose the path of least resistance.

Ali
And those three things that you said, are all engineers on the team, focusing on all three aspects, or I think you’ve said, some of them focus on defining the criteria, and some of them focus on solving problems, right.

Mei-Li
They’re all involved. You need many different disciplines to be involved in this decision-making process but each one has their responsibility or their expertise I should say. Like systems engineers, they’re experts in requirements definition. So, they’ll be giving a lot of input when we’re defining requirements. And then when we’re brainstorming solutions, design engineers are the ones who are really good at that. Their expertise is design. So, as we’re brainstorming or roughly designing different solutions, they’re heavily involved, but of course, they can only do that with the input of a test engineer who understands in depth, what the procedure is going to look like. Because I’ve made a made a wonderful tool that’s really really cool, you know, robot arm that’s going to go in and grab the piece, but the test engineer is the one with the information like, well, no, because we need to do steps A, B and C first. They’re more looking at it and like its sequential order and your robot arm won’t fit. Because C hasn’t been done yet when you’re trying to use the arm. So, like, I don’t think that any of these problems could be solved with just one discipline. It’s a collaborative effort, certainly. And I think, depending on what the problem is, and what phase you’re at, there’s going to be people who are, you know, have more responsibility to get things moving or less, but it’s, you know, it’s only going to occur successfully if you have participation of all disciplines there.

Ali
So, did you sort of figure out that you wanted to be more on the design side, as you were interning or did you have sort of an idea before that as well, that you’re wanting to be more on the design side of engineering?

Mei-Li
I think I had a little bit of an idea before, but being a test engineer, and then seeing what design engineers actually did verified it, for sure. So yeah, I mean, when I was in high school, I loved art. And I was a sculptor. And if I didn’t go into engineering, in college, I was gonna go into fine arts. So, I knew I really liked the artistic side of, you know, I had a, I like exercising the creative part of my brain as well. And so, a lot of what I focused on in college had to do with design, engineering, also. And I liked that. It’s a very good bridge for somebody who enjoys being creative, and especially sculpting you know, that I love ceramics. And that was my outlet in high school and in college. And so, design engineering is like computer animated sculpting. A lot of the times you’re just using software to help you make something instead of clay.

Ali
Could we talk about why the sunshield was essential for the James Webb telescope? And were you involved more in the sunshield design or more in the bus? And solving that problem that you described with the bus?

Mei-Li
Yeah, so even within design engineering, there are different types. So, the design of the sunshield was done by flight design engineers. They are experts in designing the parts that go to space. I was a mechanical grounds systems designer. When something needed to be tested, or integrated, or even something goes wrong, and they need special tools, you know, robot arms or whatever, you know, to fix the problem. That’s what I designed. So I’m not designing the stuff that actually goes to space. I’m designing all like a slew of equipment that’s needed in the integration and test. So, like, in terms of the sun shield, I had heavy involvement, but not from like designing, you know, the design of the sun shield happened in the early 2000s. So, I was like, 10, you know,

Ali
Has this technology evolved from then, or don’t they change anything since 2000?

Mei-Li
That’s a really good point. And that was like an electrical problem that I mentioned earlier. That happened because of software obsolescence. Because, you know, we were 10 years late in launching. So the parts that were in there were good, but it had been a long time. And so, you know, the, yes, we designed something that’s the first of its kind, and it’s brand new, but it’s not really brand new, it’s 20 years old, at the rate in which technology changes. The design of the sunshield was still, you know, was done 20 years ago, but nobody’s ever done anything like it, so it was still brand new, and the first of its kind.

When I joined, they had just finished putting it together. They had just finished, like actually fabricating it and so now it was time to test. There was a ton of mechanical ground systems, pieces that went into the testing of it. So, when we’re testing the sunshield to be able to operate in space, obviously, we want it to operate in zero G, but here there’s gravity. So how are we going to do that to make sure it works? Well, we have to design a slew of zero gravity simulators and weight off-loaders, things like that. And that’s what my team designed. So, I designed one zero gravity simulator for the deployment of the telescope upwards. Like there’s one point and the deployment sequence if you like, I know that there’s a YouTube video online where you can watch the entire James Webb. First it comes down, right and then the sunshield spreads out. And then, at one point that telescope starts moving upwards into its final position. That test, we needed it to like create a zero gravity simulator to offload the weight of the telescope. And that thing on top, I helped design. So, that’s an example of the sort of work that we do.

But if you’re interested in like the design of flight hardware, the stuff that actually goes to space, that’s a whole another design position. They have different sets of requirements. Their process to design, something that goes to space is much more rigorous, because it’s going to space, it’s less rapid. A lot of the designs I do are very rapid. And the design flight design engineers, it’s as much it’s a slower process, because they have to be very meticulous, you know, every single design decision.

Ali
What’s the new project that you guys are working on?

Mei-Li
There’s so much going on at Northrop all the time, but I am manager of cryocooler manufacturing. Basically, what it is, is just it works the same way a refrigerator does, fancy space refrigerator. And the point of having a cryocooler is to cool down all of the electronic components. James Webb has the most sophisticated cryocooler ever made. It really is an impressive piece of technology. What it does is it keeps all of the electronic components very, very cold so that if you have anything like Infrared, or X rays, or anything that’s trying to pick up light waves, you need to be able to keep everything very cold so that the sensors and the cameras on the telescope that read heat, or light can pick up, you know, the faint signals of those.

We fabricate cryocoolers here and then we include them in some of our own vertical integration. We also sell them to other companies like Lockheed and Raytheon. Other companies who also make satellites and might need a cryocooler.

Ali
How does the technology benefit the Webb and all these satellites?

Mei-Li
It makes the infrared and X ray possible. So, since Webb is an infrared telescope, without the cryocooler, these images wouldn’t be possible. What would happen is the electronics would be too hot and then that would mean that the infrared pictures that the telescope is taking, it wouldn’t be able to take those. Instead, it would just be muddled by the heat signatures coming from the electronic components.

Ali
How would you describe the infrared technology? What’s the advantage that it offers, compared to what they have on the Hubble?

Mei-Li
Sure, yeah. Visible light is what the Hubble takes pictures of. When you just take a picture of visible light, you can only see what is there right now, whereas infrared light, I mean, think of it like heat graph. You might have seen like in movies, sometimes when they have like cops that are looking into rooms, but you can see through doors, because you’re looking for a heat signature sort of thing. And it’s basically like the Webb has a camera so we can see through clouds. We can see through dust. We can see through rocks, meteors. We can see through all of that to see the infrared that’s many, many, many, many more miles away. Similarly, if I if I put my hand down on my desk here, and then I pick up my hand, if I looked at that spot on my desk with an infrared light, my handprint would still be there, right? Because heat has transferred from my hand to the desk. So visible light, it would just be a blank spot on my desk, but infrared light, it would say Oh, well, like there’s a hand that was here, right? Because there’s heat there. That was transferred from my hands to the desk.

Similarly, what we think happened with the Big Bang, and the first light is that those stars, galaxies, they don’t exist anymore. What happened with the Big Bang, that doesn’t exist anymore. But if we point the Webb towards that place where that did happen, there should be a heat signature from when it occurred because it was an event of universal size, right? So, like the biggest heat signature ever. And so there should be some remnants of that. So, the James Webb’s, part of its mission was to see if we see what we expect to see, to prove that the Big Bang actually did happen. If we don’t see that the heat signature that we expect to see, then maybe something else happened. We have found some images that suggest that that the Big Bang happened far before when we thought it happened. The universe is a lot older than we think it is. And so, I don’t think anything officially has been released yet like no new theories, but it’s not what we expected.

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Ali
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