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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, September 9, 2013 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Bill Ochs & Mike Menzel

"The James Webb Space Telescope: Challenges Overcome and Current Status"

ABSTRACT -- Over the last two years, the JWST Program has made outstanding progress towards the October 2018 launch including completion of optics, completion of sun shield engineering templates, delivery of flight science instruments, I&T initiation, and much more.  This progress has not been without overcoming engineering challenges and issues.  We will talk about the current status of JWST and overcoming engineer challenges/issues.

SPEAKER -- Bill Ochs has 30+ years of experience in the aerospace industry. He has worked in both private industry and for NASA and is currently the Project Manager for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Bill received a B.S.E.E and an M.S.E.E from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a Masters in Operations Research from George Washington University. He began his career in 1979 with the Bendix Guidance Systems Division in Teterboro, N.J. as an electronics/software engineer, developing the flight software for the Hubble Space Telescope safing system.

In 1983, Bill transferred to Goddard Space Flight Center as a systems engineer for HST operations. In 1990, Bill joined NASA as the HST Operations Observatory Systems Manager. Bill has also served as the HST Deputy Operations Manager and the HST Operations Servicing Mission Manager.

In 1998, Bill became the Project Manager for the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) which was successfully launched in January of 2003. After SORCE, he was appointed the Project Manager for LDCM and led the project through difficult period of the LDCM Data Buy, flying an instrument on NPOESS, to the final mission implementation.

In December 2010, Bill was appointed the JWST Project Manager.

Bill has received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, the Space Flight Awareness Honoree Award, various NASA Group Awards, 2010 NASA Honor Award for Outstanding Leadership Medal, and most recently the 2011 Robert H. Goddard Award for Outstanding Leadership.

SPEAKER -- Mike Menzel has 32 years of experience in the aerospace industry. He has worked 23 years in industry for commercial and defense missions and for NASA for the past 9 years. He is currently the Mission Systems Engineer for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Mike received a B.S. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981 and an M.S. in Physics from Columbia University in 1986. He began his career in 1981 with the RCA Astro Space Division in East Windsor, N.J. as an antenna engineer, designing flight antennas for commercial and defense communications and remote sensing satellites. In 1990 Mike took a position in the Systems Engineering Group of the General Electric Astro Space Division designing commercial, DOD and civil space systems. In 1995 he took a position as Director of Systems Engineering in the Orbital Sciences Corporation, and in 1997 he took as position as the Deputy Program Manager for the HST Servicing Group at Lockheed Martin.

Mike began working on the Pre-Phase studies for the Next Generation Space Telescope in 1998, and in June of 2004 he took the position as the NASA Mission Systems Engineer for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Mike received the Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement Award for Engineering in 2009, the NASA Systems Engineering Excellence Award in 2010, the Mission Engineering and Systems Analysis Division Engineering Excellence Award in 2013, and the 2013 NASA Honor Award for Outstanding Leadership Medal.


Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov