CLS: America’s Outposts — How Did We Get Here?

Launched on Christmas Day 2021, the Webb Space Telescope began its mission to search for the first luminous objects of the universe — first generation stars and baby galaxies — to help answer fundamental questions about how the Universe came to look like it does today. Why is the universe transparent? How do galaxies form in the cosmic web, assemble and evolve?  How are elements formed? How did we get here? This presentation summarizes the science that drove the Webb telescope’s design, reviews its story from development to launch and discusses some of its discoveries. 

Dr. H. Philip Stahl is a Senior Optical Physicist at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, maturing technologies to design, manufacture and test ultra-stable high-precision large-aperture space telescopes to image exoplanets. Currently, he is a member of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) Project Office and Planetary Origins and Evolution Multispectral Monochromator (POEMM) project engineering team. Previously, he was responsible for developing mirror technologies for the Webb Space Telescope and overseeing the manufacture, test and certification of the Webb primary, secondary and tertiary mirrors. 

Stahl is a leading authority in optical systems engineering and optical metrology with over 45 years of experience on large-aperture and segmented-mirror telescopes. Many of the world’s largest telescopes have been made with the aid of interferometers developed by him. 

Stahl is recipient of a NASA Distinguished Service Medal, a Fellow of SPIE and Optical Society of America and member of International Astronautical Union and American Astronomy Society. 

Stahl earned his Ph.D. (1985) and master’s (1983) in optical science at the University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center. He earned a bachelor’s in physics and mathematics from Wittenberg University in 1979. He is a 1975 graduate of Bellevue High School and 1999 inductee into the Bellevue Halls of Excellence.