October 2, 2023: Garth Ilingworth

Decades of Effort, Remarkable Technologies and Transformational Science. The Making of JWST and its Progress on its “First Stars, First Galaxies” Goal.
Abstract
JWST is an extraordinarily ambitious astronomy mission that exceeds all others in capability (and cost). JWST is far more complex than any other space science mission. Its flawless Ariane 5 launch and the remarkable success of the challenging deployments are a testament to the engineering and management commitment of thousands of people in the US and in our partner nations (the European ESA and Canadian CSA). Yet there is a further dimension to a mission like JWST - and that is the crucial support of our policy and decision makers, Agency leaders and those of our partners. I will give a broad overview of the multi-faceted challenges that JWST faced, and overcame, over several decades from its conceptual beginnings as the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) in the 1980s, and highlight some of the remarkable scientific insights into the earliest galaxies that have already been revealed in JWST’s first year.