Yesterday (as I write this) I attended the unveiling of the first James Webb Space Telescope science images and reception afterward at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Though I am retired since last February, a couple months after launch, my project manager got me an invite. Some day I should sit down and write my memoirs, since it’s been a long strange trip.

It was an amazing day. I’m still feeling the afterglow. To have been a part of it all for the last 23 1/2 years is so very cool. I did not expect to have this life.

They were all happy to see me at the Institute. How is retirement they asked. Very strange I said. And then they all made me feel like I was part of the team again. We did this.

I’ve an invite this morning to go to Hopkins and watch the release of the first James Webb science images with the Institute staff. It was so very nice of my project manager to get me the invite though I am retired now. So I’m all excited about it. And really touched to know that I’m remembered fondly among those I worked with. This last half of my life is very Very different from the first.

…And I finally get to wear the suit I bought for watching the launch that I didn’t get to use because they moved the launch date back to Christmas and the campus was closed that day so we all had to watch from home. Apart of course from those of us actually working in the MOC. I can get all dressed up tomorrow. I’ll take a mirror selfie if I remember, for posterity. I am rarely to be found in a nice business suit.

Loveless though it was…

I’m still really proud of the Rube Goldberg contraption I made out of a Raytheon Eclipse CECIL script, a DOS batch program, sftp, a bash shell script, a cron job, and three different computers to let me get email notifications whenever we lost the telemetry link to Goddard because I was the only one maintaining that link and Goddard would not allow email (completely understandable) on the JLAB machine we were using.

Six years ago I shared this award with two of my co-workers in the Integration and Test branch.

Got back home from Greenbelt yesterday at around 2PM. I’d rented a room for the night at the same Holiday Inn I usually use when I need to be at Goddard first thing in the morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed. For the past two days I’ve been participating in tests of the JWST ground control network…first in the Mission Operations Center at Hopkins, and then Friday at the backup MOC at Goddard. My job was Test Conductor, calling out steps in a test procedure over one of the NASA voice loops with Goddard and White Sands, and jotting down the results. We were linking the MOCs up with the spacecraft over a Deep Space Network link from White Sands, and sending what they call NoOp commands (Here’s a command, but don’t do anything just tell us you got it and then drop it on the floor). It’s just to test the network connectivity, not the spacecraft. Those tests are also in progress, but so far I haven’t been directly involved in any of them.

I’m also involved in other aspects of this mission and I can’t discuss details, but I cannot begin to tell you how cool it is to see myself, a kid who watched the first Mercury astronauts being launched into space, talking over a NASA voice loop, helping to birth a spacecraft, and watching it speak its first words. Mom lived to see me get this job, and it made her proud. I wasn’t expected to amount to much in some quarters of that side of the family. But there are times I really wish she could see what her boy has gotten himself into now.

Here’s what I did  during Happy Hour last  Friday…

How was Yours?

(I’m the guy in the orange Mountain Parka on the right…)