WEBVTT

00:00:01.070 --> 00:00:03.791
I'm an astronomer who builds telescopes.

00:00:04.563 --> 00:00:08.524
I build telescopes because,
number one, they are awesome.

00:00:09.281 --> 00:00:11.330
But number two,

00:00:11.354 --> 00:00:15.062
I believe if you want to discover
a new thing about the universe,

00:00:15.086 --> 00:00:16.618
you have to look at the universe

00:00:16.642 --> 00:00:17.870
in a new way.

00:00:18.378 --> 00:00:20.227
New technologies in astronomy --

00:00:20.251 --> 00:00:23.849
things like lenses, photographic plates,

00:00:23.873 --> 00:00:26.288
all the way up to space telescopes --

00:00:26.312 --> 00:00:29.404
each gave us new ways to see the universe

00:00:29.428 --> 00:00:32.133
and directly led to a new understanding

00:00:32.157 --> 00:00:33.307
of our place in it.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:34.663 --> 00:00:37.038
But those discoveries come with a cost.

00:00:37.450 --> 00:00:41.091
It took thousands of people and 44 years

00:00:41.115 --> 00:00:44.924
to get the Hubble Space Telescope
from an idea into orbit.

00:00:45.380 --> 00:00:46.903
It takes time,

00:00:46.927 --> 00:00:48.745
it takes a tolerance for failure,

00:00:48.769 --> 00:00:50.707
it takes individual people

00:00:50.731 --> 00:00:53.501
choosing every day not to give up.

00:00:54.247 --> 00:00:57.196
I know how hard that choice is
because I live it.

00:00:57.220 --> 00:01:03.278
The reality of my job is that I fail
almost all the time and still keep going,

00:01:03.302 --> 00:01:05.684
because that's how telescopes get built.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:06.754 --> 00:01:08.593
The telescope I helped build is called

00:01:08.617 --> 00:01:13.873
the faint intergalactic-medium
red-shifted emission balloon,

00:01:13.897 --> 00:01:15.516
which is a mouthful,

00:01:15.540 --> 00:01:16.895
so we call it "FIREBall."

00:01:16.919 --> 00:01:20.678
And don't worry, it is not going
to explode at the end of this story.

00:01:22.137 --> 00:01:24.648
I've been working on FIREBall
for more than 10 years

00:01:24.672 --> 00:01:28.109
and now lead the team
of incredible people who built it.

00:01:28.481 --> 00:01:32.871
FIREBall is designed to observe
some of the faintest structures known:

00:01:32.895 --> 00:01:35.775
huge clouds of hydrogen gas.

00:01:36.435 --> 00:01:37.734
These clouds are giant.

00:01:37.758 --> 00:01:40.296
They are even bigger than
whatever you're thinking of.

00:01:40.320 --> 00:01:41.505
They are huge,

00:01:41.529 --> 00:01:44.849
huge clouds of hydrogen that we think
flow into and out of galaxies.

00:01:45.521 --> 00:01:47.369
I work on FIREBall

00:01:47.393 --> 00:01:50.577
because what I really want
is to take our view of the universe

00:01:50.601 --> 00:01:53.765
from one with just light from stars

00:01:53.789 --> 00:01:59.157
to one where we can see and measure
every atom that exists.

00:01:59.711 --> 00:02:01.192
That's all that I want to do.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:01.216 --> 00:02:03.208
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:03.232 --> 00:02:05.442
But observing at least some of those atoms

00:02:05.466 --> 00:02:09.237
is crucial to our understanding
of why galaxies look the way they do.

00:02:09.261 --> 00:02:10.603
I want to know

00:02:10.627 --> 00:02:14.615
how that hydrogen gas
gets into a galaxy and creates a star.

00:02:15.909 --> 00:02:18.516
My work on FIREBall started in 2008,

00:02:18.540 --> 00:02:21.438
working not on the telescope
but on the light sensor,

00:02:21.462 --> 00:02:23.541
which is the heart of any telescope.

00:02:24.153 --> 00:02:26.939
This new sensor was being developed
by a team that I joined

00:02:26.963 --> 00:02:28.867
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

00:02:29.710 --> 00:02:33.866
And our goal was to prove
that this sensor would work really well

00:02:33.890 --> 00:02:35.650
to detect that hydrogen gas.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:36.618 --> 00:02:37.991
In my work on this,

00:02:38.015 --> 00:02:45.011
I destroyed several very,
very, very expensive sensors

00:02:45.035 --> 00:02:47.142
before realizing that
the machine I was using

00:02:47.166 --> 00:02:50.968
created a plasma that shorted out
anything electrical that we put in it.

00:02:51.414 --> 00:02:54.183
We used a different machine,
there were other challenges,

00:02:54.207 --> 00:02:56.184
and it took years to get it right.

00:02:56.208 --> 00:02:58.852
But when that first sensor worked,

00:02:58.876 --> 00:03:01.074
it was glorious.

00:03:01.098 --> 00:03:05.005
And our sensors are now 10 times better
than the previous state of the art

00:03:05.029 --> 00:03:07.977
and are getting put into
all kinds of new telescopes.

00:03:08.001 --> 00:03:12.899
Our sensors will give us a new way
to see the universe and our place in it.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:14.035 --> 00:03:16.120
So, sensors done,

00:03:16.144 --> 00:03:17.470
time to build a telescope.

00:03:17.494 --> 00:03:21.108
And FIREBall is weird
as far as telescopes go,

00:03:21.132 --> 00:03:24.124
because it's not in space,
and it's not on the ground.

00:03:24.148 --> 00:03:27.636
Instead, it hangs on a cable
from a giant balloon

00:03:27.660 --> 00:03:30.685
and observes for one night only

00:03:30.709 --> 00:03:33.468
from 130,000 feet in the stratosphere,

00:03:33.492 --> 00:03:36.259
at the very edge of space.

00:03:36.283 --> 00:03:41.159
This is partly because the edge of space
is much cheaper than actual space.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:41.183 --> 00:03:42.427
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:42.451 --> 00:03:46.067
So building it, of course, more failures:

00:03:46.908 --> 00:03:48.077
mirrors that failed,

00:03:48.101 --> 00:03:50.054
scratched mirrors that had to be remade;

00:03:50.666 --> 00:03:51.937
cooling system failures,

00:03:51.961 --> 00:03:54.128
an entire system that had to be remade;

00:03:54.731 --> 00:04:00.828
calibration failures, we ran tests
again and again and again and again;

00:04:00.852 --> 00:04:03.266
failures when you literally
least expect them:

00:04:03.290 --> 00:04:07.196
we had an adorable but super angry
baby falcon that landed

00:04:07.220 --> 00:04:09.120
on our spectrograph tank one day.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:09.144 --> 00:04:10.173
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:10.197 --> 00:04:12.387
Although to be fair,
this was the greatest day

00:04:12.411 --> 00:04:14.003
in the history of this project.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:14.027 --> 00:04:15.210
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:15.234 --> 00:04:17.500
I really loved that falcon.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:18.209 --> 00:04:21.361
But falcon damage fixed, we got it built

00:04:21.385 --> 00:04:23.610
for an August 2017 launch attempt --

00:04:23.634 --> 00:04:25.764
and then failed to launch,

00:04:25.788 --> 00:04:30.568
due to six weeks of continuous rain
in the New Mexico desert.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:30.592 --> 00:04:33.120
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:33.144 --> 00:04:35.108
Our spirits dampened, we showed up again,

00:04:35.132 --> 00:04:37.735
August 2018, year 10.

00:04:38.247 --> 00:04:41.287
And on the morning of September 22nd,

00:04:44.611 --> 00:04:47.046
we finally got the telescope launched.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:47.501 --> 00:04:52.214
(Applause)

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:52.238 --> 00:04:56.960
I have put so much of myself --
my whole life -- into this project,

00:04:56.984 --> 00:04:59.933
and I, like, still can't believe
that that happened.

00:05:00.663 --> 00:05:04.380
And I have this picture that's taken
right around sunset on that day

00:05:04.404 --> 00:05:07.158
of our balloon,

00:05:07.182 --> 00:05:08.379
FIREBall hanging from it,

00:05:08.383 --> 00:05:10.021
and the nearly full moon.

00:05:10.045 --> 00:05:11.290
And I love this picture.

00:05:11.314 --> 00:05:13.520
God, I love it.

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:15.092 --> 00:05:16.244
But I look at it,

00:05:16.268 --> 00:05:17.698
and it makes me want to cry,

00:05:18.751 --> 00:05:23.013
because when fully inflated,
these balloons are spherical,

00:05:23.037 --> 00:05:24.553
and this one isn't.

00:05:24.577 --> 00:05:26.553
It's shaped like a teardrop.

00:05:26.577 --> 00:05:29.902
And that's because there is a hole in it.

00:05:31.104 --> 00:05:33.133
Sometimes balloons fail, too.

00:05:33.856 --> 00:05:36.208
FIREBall crash-landed
in the New Mexico desert,

00:05:36.232 --> 00:05:38.537
and we didn't get the data that we wanted.

00:05:38.561 --> 00:05:42.498
And at the end of that day,
I thought to myself,

00:05:42.522 --> 00:05:44.172
"Why am I doing this?"

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:45.545 --> 00:05:48.559
And I've thought a lot
about why since that day.

00:05:49.202 --> 00:05:53.634
And I've realized that all of my work
has been full of things

00:05:53.658 --> 00:05:55.140
that break and fail,

00:05:55.164 --> 00:05:57.719
that we don't understand and they fail,

00:05:57.743 --> 00:06:00.001
that we just get wrong the first time,

00:06:00.025 --> 00:06:01.488
and so they fail.

00:06:01.512 --> 00:06:04.085
I think about the thousands
of people who built Hubble

00:06:04.109 --> 00:06:06.062
and how many failures they endured.

00:06:06.086 --> 00:06:09.219
There were countless failures,
heartbreaking failures,

00:06:09.243 --> 00:06:10.925
even when it was in space.

00:06:10.949 --> 00:06:14.516
And none of those failures
were a reason for them to give up.

00:06:15.541 --> 00:06:17.088
I think about why I love my job.

00:06:17.112 --> 00:06:19.539
I want to know what
is happening in the universe.

00:06:19.563 --> 00:06:22.359
You all want to know
what's happening in the universe, too.

00:06:22.383 --> 00:06:24.717
I want to know what's going on
with that hydrogen.

00:06:25.891 --> 00:06:29.370
And so I've realized
that discovery is mostly a process

00:06:29.394 --> 00:06:31.233
of finding things that don't work,

00:06:31.257 --> 00:06:35.000
and failure is inevitable when
you're pushing the limits of knowledge.

00:06:35.024 --> 00:06:36.630
And that's what I want to do.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:37.010 --> 00:06:39.457
So I'm choosing to keep going.

00:06:39.960 --> 00:06:41.642
And our team is going to do

00:06:41.666 --> 00:06:45.849
what everyone who has ever
built anything before us has done:

00:06:45.873 --> 00:06:47.109
we're going to try again,

00:06:47.133 --> 00:06:48.313
in 2020.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:48.648 --> 00:06:53.603
And it might feel like a failure today --
and it really does --

00:06:53.627 --> 00:06:55.908
but it's only going to stay a failure

00:06:55.932 --> 00:06:57.538
if I give up.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:57.562 --> 00:06:58.790
Thank you very much.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:58.814 --> 00:07:05.093
(Applause)