Special Section Guest Editorial: Lessons Learned from the James Webb Space Telescope Program

The special section of JATIS was originally intended to collect lessons learned over a wide variety of large astronomical projects, ground, space, studies and flight programs.While that was the intention, it was not the result.All the submissions for this section come from experience on a single program, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.The most important lesson that we can learn from and about the Webb telescope is that it is functioning as intended.Heading into its third year of science operations, it is functioning at or beyond required levels.In this section, Feinberg et al. indicate that the wavefront is twice as good as specification, allowing for significantly more science.The clear lesson is that with good, careful engineering even the seemingly impossible is, in fact, possible.Webb's achievements have been recognized with numerous awards, including the highest award in U.