On Wednesday, we finally ventured out of the house as a family and were joined by Mom and Vickie to visit the full size model of the James Webb Space Telescope, which was on display in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Those who've been following our blog for a while will remember that Billy has been working on developing the telescope's computer ground support system for the past three and a half years. After seeing plenty of computerized mock-ups of how the telescope will look, we couldn't pass up the chance to see what it will look like when it unfolds in space.
The outing also felt like a good first trip for our family, since the family-friendly policies at the Space Telescope Science Institute allow Billy to spend Nora's first seven weeks at home helping to care for her. It's hard to believe that she'll be at least seven years old when the telescope launches, but it was fun to imagine how much she will know about space and the telescope itself by that time. We hope that someday the JWST will radically change the way we understand our universe, as Hubble has done before it, and we look forward to showing Nora these photos once JWST is a household name, too.
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