Wavefront Sensing and Control Demo during the Cryo-vacuum Testing of JWST: Exercising the Science & Operations Center

Aligning and commissioning the James Webb Space Telescope's segmented mirrors after launch will last many months and involve the telescope itself, all science instruments, and all parts of the observatory ground system. In an effort to assess and demonstrate readiness of the complete end-to-end system - i.e. the flight optical telescope elements (OTE), the Integrated Science Instruments Module, the on-board operational scripts, and the ground processing infrastructure - we performed two operations tests during the JWST OTIS cryogenic campaign in 2017. They are the Wavefront Sensing and Control Demonstration activities at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), where we performed flight-like sensing and control using the flight software to command mirror moves and take measurements, and a "Shadow Mode test" at the Space Telescope Science Institute's Mission Operations Center (MOC), where we demonstrated processing of the JSC data through the entire ground system infrastructure. Overall, these tests demonstrated that the full system that will support OTE commissioning is soundly designed although still not fully mature. This paper focuses on the operations and systems testing aspects and some lessons learned. We also report on a series of Wavefront Rehearsals being held at the MOC that are providing additional opportunities to build team readiness in operating the ground system as a whole using high-fidelity observatory simulators.