By the end of this decade, scientists may start rewriting
textbooks on the earliest days of the universe thanks to an
ambitious project based in Redondo Beach. Engineers at Northrop
Grumman Corp.'s Aerospace Systems sector are leading an industry
team developing a telescope to look back in time to the period
right after the Big Bang when stars and galaxies were starting
to form. | PHOTOS Called the James Webb Space Telescope, the
NASA-funded program is often described as the successor to the
better known Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble was launched in 1990
and produced images of stars that existed more than 12 billion
years ago. However, the James Webb has a more ambitious mission,
to peer into the heavens about 13.7 billion years in the past.
Northrop's progress, often described as a process of retiring
risk, has been methodical and meticulous as groundbreaking
technologies went from sketches on a computer screen to reality.
"You retire risk incrementally," said Scott Willoughby,
Northrop's James Webb program