NASA Ominously Chooses Halloween 2021 to Launch Long-Delayed Space Telescope - James Webb Space Telescope.jpg

https://gizmodo.com/nasa-ominously-c...-de-1844408269

NASA hopes to launch the much-anticipated James Webb Space Telescope from French
Guiana on October 31, 2021, the agency announced today. Ongoing technical
challenges and the covid-19 pandemic were cited as reasons for the latest delay
to the project.

A launch on Halloween seems only appropriate for this beleaguered project, which
has been marred by a steady stream of cost overruns and scheduling delays since
its inception. The powerful telescope was originally supposed to go to space in
2007.

The new date—October 31, 2021—represents a seven-month delay from the most
recent launch target of March 2021 atop an Ariane 5 rocket. Before that, it was
supposed to go up in May 2020. And so on in that fashion. Sadly, it’s hard to
get excited by the new launch date. It’s become a kind of “we’ll believe it when
we see it” sort of thing.

James Webb is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which is now 30 years
old. The project is currently in the integration and testing phase of
development, the final phase before it gets transported to French Guiana. Once
in space, some million miles away from Earth, Webb will use its infrared
telescope to observe some of the oldest galaxies in the universe, study
star-forming nebulae, and even scan the atmospheres of distant exoplanets.
There’s no question this observatory is going to be amazing—it just needs to get
done.

At a NASA press conference earlier today, Gregory Robinson, JWST program
director, said the decision to move the launch from March 2021 to October 2021
had to do with lingering development challenges and hardships imposed by the
covid-19 pandemic. NASA, he said, was planning to re-evaluate the project’s
schedule margins prior to covid-19, but the pandemic forced the issue, resulting
in yet another delay.

Stephen Jurczyk, NASA associate administrator, said the primary challenge of
covid-19 was the “impact of people not being at work and the reduced number of
people available for shifts.” Social distancing and other on-site safety
provisions were other factors negatively influencing the pace of development and
testing of the telescope, he said.

Despite these hardships, teams at Northrop Grumman, the space agency’s principal
contractor for the project, continue to work “tirelessly” and in an “intense
environment,” said Jurczyk. “Team safety is our highest priority,” he added.

When asked to account for the seven-month delay, Robinson said three months had
to do with covid-19 and two months had to do with existing technical issues,
such as pending vibration testing, a review of the telescope’s new sunshield,
risk-reduction measures, among other outstanding tasks. The remaining two months
were added as a buffer, said Robinson.

According to a NASA press release, there will be no more cost overruns as a
result of this particular delay, as “Webb will use existing program funding to
stay within its $8.8 billion development cost cap.”

On a positive note, the JWST development team recently completed a comprehensive
systems test, in which critical software and electrical components were tested
across the entire observatory. Over the next few months, the team will perform
important vibration and acoustic tests to simulate the shaking that will occur
during launch.

NASA and Northrop Grumman appear to be making progress, but they’re not past the
finish line yet. It’s easy to be pessimistic, given the project’s history and
now the spooky launch date, but this thing has to get to space eventually.
Right?



*