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Joshua Abel: Delivering Roman’s Optical Telescope Assembly On Time, On Target


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Joshua Abel: Delivering Roman’s Optical Telescope Assembly On Time, On Target

Joshua Abel, a man wearing white coveralls, a light blue hair net, and a light blue face mask, stands and poses with arms crossed in front of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's primary mirror. The mirror is shaped like a large silver disk, reflecting part of an American flag in its upper surface. Both Joshua and the mirror are inside a clean room, with pipes, shelves, stairs, and storage lining the walls, most in shades of light turquoise. Black and yellow caution tape forms a barrier around the telescope mirror.
Joshua Abel’s job as lead systems engineer for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Optical Telescope Assembly is “to deliver the assembly to the Roman observatory on time, within budget, and meeting all the technical requirements.”
Credit: NASA / Chris Gunn

Name: Joshua Abel

Title: Lead systems engineer for the Roman Space Optical Telescope Assembly

Formal Job Classification: Flight Systems Design Engineer

Organization: Instrument/Payload Systems Engineering Branch (Code 592), Mission Engineering and Systems Analysis Division, Engineering and Technology Directorate

Editor’s note: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Optical Telescope Assembly (OTA) includes the telescope’s primary and secondary mirrors, as well as supporting optics. The OTA enables the telescope to collect light that is then delivered to the observatory instruments.

What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? How do you help support Goddard’s mission?

As the lead systems engineer for the Roman Space Telescope Optical Telescope Assembly, I am the government technical authority for procurement of the assembly, currently being manufactured by L3Harris Corporation in Rochester, New York. I am responsible for technical oversight of the vendor and verifying requirements.

What was your path to becoming an aerospace engineer at Goddard?

In 1999, I received a B.S. in interdisciplinary engineering focused on biomedical engineering from Purdue University. I began a master’s in biomedical engineering in bioheat transfer from Purdue University, but left in 2001 to work at Space Systems/Loral as a thermal systems engineer for satellites.

In 2005, I came to Goddard to work on Hubble Servicing Mission 4 and other NASA satellite servicing projects as a thermal systems engineer. In 2018, I began supporting the New Opportunities Office as a systems engineer, later joining the Instrument/Payload Systems Engineering Branch in my current role.

What are your goals as the lead systems engineer for the Roman Space Telescope Optical Telescope Assembly?

My goal is to deliver the assembly to the Roman observatory on time, within budget, and meeting all the technical requirements. I lead a small team of subject matter experts to review the vendor’s plans and help resolve any technical issues.

What is your management style?

I have a broad engineering background which helps me ask the right questions. I like to build consensus within the team and consolidate everyone’s work into a cohesive and understandable package, communicating complex issues both within the team and to management.

What makes Goddard special?

Everyone here loves their work and is focused on mission success. Even when conversations are difficult and the stakes are high, the emotion comes from caring so deeply. As a systems engineer, my goal is to listen to all ideas and help find the best direction for the project.

Joshua Abel, a man with short gray hair and a short dark gray beard, smiles and poses with his daughter for a selfie. Joshua wears a bright blue soccer polo and his daughter, a young girl with long dark hair, wears a white soccer jersey. They pose in the shade of a large tree, with yards, driveways and more trees visible behind them.
Systems engineer Joshua Abel is a team player at work, where he and his team review vendor plans and resolve technical issues for the Roman Space Telescope’s Optical Telescope Assembly, and at home, where he plays and coaches soccer.
Courtesy of Joshua Abel

What drives you?

I try to do what is needed and contribute to the best of my ability. I am energized when someone says they need help, be it fixing things that are broken or putting new things together. I’m always excited to continue to learn from the our expert team members and vendors.

I prefer working in a team. I like the dynamic environment of systems engineering, which is full of difficult problems that need a larger group to get enough perspectives to solve.

My background and skill mix are a little bit of everything. I enjoy English, communication, math, and science. These interests help me see different sides of a problem.

I like to take things that are slow and repetitive and make them faster and more interesting for myself and others. For example, I like to write Microsoft Excel programs to analyze thermal model data and other large databases to improve productivity. 

What advice would you give young engineers?

Take whatever project you are working on and exceed expectations. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Early tasks for young engineers are not always the most exciting, but work to the best of your ability and try to learn as much as you can. Understand the job and try to see if it can be accomplished better or faster. If you approach every task with this attitude, the next opportunity will always come.

Build your network of experts and use their lessons learned to help your project, always returning that help when you can. Oftentimes the most important piece of knowledge you’ll be able to provide your team is simply knowing who to call to for advice. All of NASA’s engineers are always willing to help.

What are your hobbies?

I play and coach soccer and I also play guitar with my three children around our fire pit. Like every engineer, I’m continually working on home improvement projects for my favorite manager, my wife, who is a thermal systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

A banner graphic with a group of people smiling and the text "Conversations with Goddard" on the right. The people represent many genders, ethnicities, and ages, and all pose in front of a soft blue background image of space and stars.

Conversations With Goddard is a collection of Q&A profiles highlighting the breadth and depth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s talented and diverse workforce. The Conversations have been published twice a month on average since May 2011. Read past editions on Goddard’s “Our People” webpage.

By Elizabeth M. Jarrell
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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Last Updated
Nov 14, 2023
Editor
Jessica Evans
Contact
Rob Garner
rob.garner@nasa.gov
Location
Goddard Space Flight Center

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      “Roman will paint a more vivid picture of our universe’s past and present, giving us new clues about its possible fate,” said Rebekah Hounsell, a research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Goddard, who is exploring ways to optimize Roman’s High Latitude Time-Domain Survey. “Its findings could reshape our understanding of the cosmos.”
      This time-lapse of supernova 2018gv in galaxy NGC 2525 compresses nearly one-year of observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope into a few seconds. The supernova initially outshines the brightest stars in the galaxy before fading into obscurity. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, currently under construction, could capture such events from start to finish and alert other telescopes, such as the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, for even more detailed observations. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Riess (STScI/JHU) and the SH0ES team; acknowledgment: M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble) Fleeting Cosmic Wonders
      Because of the way this survey will observe the cosmos, it will also spot other rare phenomena. Through Roman, we will witness the birth of new black holes that form when neutron stars – the cores of exploded stars that weren’t quite massive enough to collapse to form black holes on their own – merge. These titanic events create ripples in the fabric of space-time and brilliant kilonova explosions.
      The mission is also expected to reveal several dozen tidal disruption events, which happen when a star venturing too close to a black hole is shredded by the black hole’s extreme gravity. The stellar shrapnel generates a huge amount of light as it speeds toward the black hole. Roman will pick up these flares of energy to learn how black holes affect their surroundings.
      The survey will also allow astronomers to explore variable objects, like active galaxies whose cores each host an extremely bright quasar. A quasar is a brilliant beacon of intense light powered by a supermassive black hole. The black hole voraciously feeds on infalling matter that unleashes a torrent of radiation. Roman’s steady gaze will help astronomers study how and why these outbursts fluctuate in brightness.
      And by finding hundreds of faint, faraway quasars, Roman will also allow scientists to probe the period of reionization. During this cosmic epoch, scientists think intense ultraviolet light from quasars stripped electrons from atoms and turned them into ions. This transition ushered in “cosmic dawn,” as the universe went from being mostly opaque to transparent, allowing visible and ultraviolet light to travel freely.
      “This Roman survey will provide a treasure trove of data for astronomers to comb through, enabling more open-ended cosmic exploration than is typically possible,” McEnery said. “We may serendipitously discover entirely new things we don’t yet know to look for.”
      The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
      Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
      By Ashley Balzer
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
      Media contact:
      Claire Andreoli
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
      301-286-1940
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      Last Updated Nov 14, 2023 Related Terms
      Active Galaxies Astrophysics Black Holes Dark Matter & Dark Energy Galaxies Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Research Goddard Space Flight Center Missions Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Origin & Evolution of the Universe Science & Research Stars Supernovae The Universe 301-286-1940
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