Meet the PJ resident who helped design the James Webb telescope
Noel Wong @ FMT Lifestyle-
July 29, 2022 7:30 AM
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Satyan Anandakrishnan (far left) is one of the many brilliant minds behind the sunshield that protects the James Webb Space Telescope from solar heat. (Satyan Anandakrishnan pic)
PETALING JAYA: With everything that is going on here on Earth, it is easy to forget there is much going on in the heavens as well.
Even as you go about your daily life, one of humanity’s most magnificent machines is circling the globe, staring out into the vastness of space.
The James Webb Space Telescope was launched into space just last Christmas, but already it is advancing humanity’s understanding of the universe by leaps and bounds.
While thousands of brilliant minds from around the world pooled their knowledge to make the project a success, you might be surprised to know you could actually have a friendly chat with one of them on the very streets of Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
Former aeronautics engineer Satyan Anandakrishnan may be in his retirement years, but perhaps a good rest is well and truly deserved: after all, not many can claim to have worked on both the James Webb and Hubble telescopes!
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Yet, the 63-year-old remains humble about his contributions to the scientific world and is happy to share his experiences working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).
Speaking with FMT, he said his love for science was something that stuck with him from a young age.
“I was actually a very mediocre student,” he admitted. “I was fortunate that when I was in high school, when I was not doing so well, my brother helped me with maths and science.”
His studies improved once he discovered that memorising concepts was not as effective as understanding them. This helped foster his love for science, which happened to coincide with another love: flying.
You see, Satyan grew up in India near an airfield about 480km southeast of New Delhi – he moved with his wife to Malaysia upon retiring in 2018 – and used to fly on a glider in his early years.
This, he said, left a lifelong impression on him. As such, when the time came, he chose to go into aeronautical engineering.
“My parents tried to dissuade me because they thought there weren’t that many jobs in that field,” he recalled. “But when they saw my passion, they said ‘go for it’.”
While studying in the United States, he chanced upon the opportunity to work for Nasa.
“One of my classmates was working on the Hubble Space Telescope and said there were job openings, which is how I got involved,” he explained.
Satyan served with aerospace corporation Lockheed Martin, and later with Northrop Grumman – both contractors for Nasa – and got to meet and work with many talented minds from the agency.
“I was very fortunate that the teams I worked with were extremely competent people who were also very nice,” he added.
Their work, Satyan said, demanded minute attention to detail to ensure nothing went wrong with the telescopes once they were in space.
“Think of it as a F1 car. We are not Lewis Hamilton. We are in the factory designing and building the car so it does what it needs to do.”
On James Webb, his team was responsible for the design of certain crucial subsystems. The first ensures the telescope points precisely where astronomers want; the second protects it from the sun’s heat; and the third allows for – as he puts it – “accurate pointing of the antenna to the ground station to upload commands and download all the amazing science data being collected”.
Satyan remains particularly proud of his team’s work on the telescope’s sunshield, which consists of five
layers of tennis court-size sheets.
As the telescope operates at temperatures of -230°C, any sudden exposure to heat risks damaging it, hence the need for a shield, he explained.
No doubt, deploying the sunshield was a gargantuan task. “Folding a bedsheet is difficult enough. Imagine folding five tennis courts and unfolding them without anything tangling up!”
The systems Satyan helped design ensure the shield always faces the sun, protecting the telescope from any danger.
The 20 days that followed the telescope’s launch were nerve-wracking, and he kept contacting his colleagues for updates.
“It’s not like fixing a phone where you download an update and everything’s working again. If the telescope is broken, you can’t bring it to the shop to have it fixed,” he chuckled.
The James Webb Space Telescope, Satyan said, is an important achievement for humanity as it will help scientists understand the universe better.
While it may not solve the world’s current issues, the technologies involved in its creation will have a long-reaching and positive impact.
“Humans have always looked at the stars, wondering about them since we were living in caves and hunting for food,” he added.
“We are looking back in time at the origins of the universe. This will help us understand what is out there and where we came from
