Space Kaizen, from telescopes to gravitational waves

We all know that Kaizen means continuous improvement or to be specific continual improvement, it is an incremental non-stop improvement of the status quo.

In astronomy, the invention of telescope was a very important turning point for uncovering the secrets of this dark silent fearful place, which is called “The universe”.

The kaizen story of the telescope began in the year 1608, as the first known telescopes were made by Dutch spectacle-maker Hans Lippershey who is said to have come up with his invention while watching two young boys playing with lenses. These were simple refracting telescopes made from a pair of glass lenses set into a tube.

When the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei heard about Lippershey’s invention, he quickly set about building an improved telescope in the year 1610 with a greater magnification which he used it to study the Sun.

After that, Isaac Newton made the first working reflector telescope in the year 1668, which is another Kaizen.

The difference between the telescope made by Hans and Newton’s telescope is simple as one telescope (refracting) uses convex mirror (outward curving) glass lens to collect and focus incoming light while the other (reflecting) uses a concave (inward curving) mirror focuses light toward a smaller mirror. In addition to that, this reflecting telescope is lighter, so it can be much bigger and more powerful than the refracting.

In 1897, a very big telescope was built at Yerkes Observatory in; this telescope is still used for looking at stars and tracking their movements through space.

Years later, there was a very strong desire to build an even bigger telescope with better technology so they built Hale telescope in the year 1948.

Furthermore, placing the telescopes was another Kaizen challenge as to get the best images; they usually place telescopes at high altitude so they are above the clouds and most of the atmosphere. Remote mountains are ideal, since there is little light interference from nearby towns.

The year 1990 was a real turning point in the technology of the telescopes as after many years of continual kaizen, NASA managed to build Hubble Space Telescope. Since being placed in a low Earth orbit by space shuttle Discovery in April 1990, Hubble has sent back a huge amount of scientific data and incredibly detailed images of objects in space.

After Hubble, telescopes became rather more specialized with many features that enable it to study new things; our first example is Chandra telescope, launched in 1999 and flies 200 times higher than Hubble flies. Chandra can detect X-rays from hot regions of the universe, such as exploded stars, galaxy clusters, and the edges of black holes. It can even observe X-rays from particles just before they fall into a black hole. The first X-ray emission it saw was from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Another example is Spitzer Space Telescope (NASA). This telescope was launched in the year 2003 to orbit the earth in order to take images and studies the infrared light coming from some of the coolest objects in the universe, including dust clouds around stars where stars and planets are forming, and dusty galaxies.

Third example, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (NASA), it was launched in the year 2008, and it Circles Earth every 95 minutes, (550 km) high. This telescope was developed by the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Sweden. The satellite can turn to observe new gamma rays without commands from the ground.

Herschel Telescope is our fourth example, launched in the year 2009 (European Space Agency). This telescope operates from an area in space located 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) from the Earth in the direction opposite from the Sun. Herschel can detect a wide range of wavelengths, and will investigate how the first galaxies were formed and evolved.

Finally yet importantly, In 2018 James Webb Space Telescope will be launched (NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

It will be a large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror. This telescope will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana. JWST will be the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.

Over 1000 people in more than 17 countries are developing the James Webb Space Telescope.

Shown here are team members in front of the JWST full-scale model at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

While I was writing this article, I got an update from the science alert website that After 100 years of searching, an international team of physicists has confirmed the existence of Einstein’s gravitational waves, marking one of the biggest astrophysical discoveries of the past century. This discovery is very important because it will improve our understanding of how universe works in addition to opening up a new way of studying it. This great news is just a point in a very long Kaizen initiative done by lots of scientists throughout history.

Noteworthy that i felt very proud to know that 4 Egyptian scientists, Dr. Essam Heggy -Dr. Ramy El Maary- Dr. Essam Maarouf -Ahmed El Shafie, have been working in the Rosetta mission which was launched to study comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P).

I had the honor to attend one of the lectures presented by Dr. Ramy El Maary and took a selfie with him with my little telescope

In this article, I wanted the Kaizen and lean practitioners to be able to look at Kaizen in everything; Kaizen is all around us, affecting the way we plan for our future, affecting our life directly or indirectly. The music of Kaizen is what gives us all hope for a better tomorrow, for a better attainable future.

Wish you all a very happy weekend full of love, peace, and Kaizen

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