Naomi Cooper
NASA’s recently launched James Webb Space Telescope leverages ground control and flight operation systems built by Raytheon Technologies’ intelligence and space business unit to perform its solar system exploration and observation mission.
Raytheon Intelligence & Space said Tuesday its ground control software works to monitor the condition and performance of the Hubble telescope’s successor and deliver insights into the status of the Webb systems to the mission operations team.
The software also provides command and control capabilities, ground contact scheduling, telemetry analysis and storage and observation data extraction for the astronomers and scientific community.
“We upload an observation plan, and Webb autonomously maneuvers to the targets and executes the observations defined in the plan,” said Walt Burns, RI&S program manager for the flight operations system.
The ground control system was used for testing the space observatory instruments at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Johnson Space Center in Texas.
