Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. This is Declan Garvey, editor of the Morning Dispatch.

And today, we're going to talk about the cosmos.

Last week, NASA released the first images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope,

and they are spectacular.

From the gravitational interactions between a grouping of galaxies to a star-forming region in the Karina Nebula,

the space telescope, the most powerful of its kind, and nearly three decades in the making, is giving researchers a glimpse into depths of the universe previously considered unthinkable, and it's only just getting started.

The JWST is a remarkable scientific achievement, and one that belongs to hundreds upon hundreds of astronomers, physicists, and engineers at NASA, and both the European and Canadian space agencies.

On today's episode, I had the privilege of speaking with two people who've been working on the project from the beginning.

Dr. John Mather is a Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, studying infrared astronomy and cosmology, and has served as the senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope since 1995.

Dr. Scott Ackden is a physicist at Ball Aerospace, and has spent the last 20 years as the JWST's wavefront sensing and control scientist.

Dr. Mather and Dr. Ackden brought unique perspectives to the discussion, addressing questions about the telescope, both theoretical and mechanical, and I really enjoyed talking to them about the history of the project, how the JWST operates, and what this future of space exploration holds.

Dr. Mather, Dr. Ackden, welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. Good to be here.

The only person who might be more excited than I am for this conversation is five-year-old me who spent his summer attending a space camp at Northwestern University for kids.

I'm hoping that we can have a much more higher level in-depth conversation here today that doesn't involve co-hangers and Styrofoam balls and a little bit more in-depth science.

Before we jump in, I first want to congratulate you both on the remarkable success of this telescope, what we've seen the past couple of days. I can only imagine the emotions that you've been experiencing these past six months since the launch, and then these past few days as the first pictures from the telescope have been published.

Just for listeners who don't know, you both devoted decades of your life to this project. It's something that obviously means a tremendous amount to you both on a professional level, and I'm sure on a personal level.

So I'll start with you, Dr. Mather. Can you try and explain what you felt when you first saw those images earlier this month?

Well, I was thrilled to see how beautiful they are, because although you know what you're going to look at, you just don't know what they're really going to look like. So they are so gorgeous. And not only that, they show us the telescope is working perfectly, even better than we ever hoped.

And the universe is cooperating by having things to tell us that we had never been able to see or measure before. So all at once suddenly we went from, we hardly know to now we know everything. And I am so thrilled with that. It's amazing.

It really is. And Dr. Acton, I know your role in the mission kind of wrapped up a few weeks before the images went public. Can you talk a little bit about what it was you were doing these past couple months and do you have any particularly fun memories of realizing things were finally squared away with the telescope and you could relax a little bit.

Yes, that was a lot of fun. So my role is or was I'm very quickly becoming was because we're pretty much done was the way front sensing and control sciences for the project. So over the course of two decades.

You know, being obviously a team of people were worked with put together a system that would allow us to basically focus the telescope after launch now I say focus and everybody is familiar with the idea you have a knob and turn it will change this how the image works.

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