NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was named one of the Project Management Institute’s 50 Most Influential Projects of 2022. The Webb mission received the honor “for envisioning the most complex and powerful telescope ever built.”
“The Webb is a one-of-a-kind telescope,” said Bonnie Seaton, Webb deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Building an observatory with technologies that have never been built before comes with a myriad of technical, schedule, and budget challenges. Successfully overcoming these challenges required constant attention to the big picture of budget and schedule while keeping a sharp eye on countless technical details. The hard work and dedication of the Webb management and the entire team culminated in the launch, commissioning and operations of the Webb observatory that is now bringing us awesome science and stunning imagery.”
Webb is an infrared observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, with longer wavelength coverage and greatly improved sensitivity. Webb is a unique mission with ambitious science goals, which required the development of several innovative and powerful new technologies ranging from optics to detectors to thermal control systems. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
Launched Dec. 25, 2021, from French Guiana, the Webb telescope is already providing new views of the universe and uncovering secrets that were previously inaccessible. Webb has seen early galaxies and peered through dusty clouds to see stars forming, such as in the Pillars of Creation. Webb has also revealed the atmosphere of a distant world as never seen before, and new imagery of planets in our own solar system.
Project Management Institute or PMI is a professional organization for project management with a global community. The list of PMI’s Most Influential Projects highlights “compelling projects around the world and across industries that achieved significant milestones and transformed their sectors.” The list highlights the progress teams have made on projects in education, climate action, architecture, technology, healthcare, and more.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb’s design pushed the boundaries of space telescope capabilities to solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.
For more information about the Webb mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/webb
NASA Headquarters, Washington oversees the Webb telescope mission. NASA Goddard manages Webb for the agency and oversees work on the mission performed by the Space Telescope Science Institute, Northrop Grumman, and other mission partners. In addition to Goddard, several NASA centers contributed to the project, including the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and others.
Rob Gutro
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov