James Webb Space Telescope

Tuckerfan · Sep 28, 2017

Delays in getting it assembled and tested are cited as the reasons why.

NASA Delays Hubble Successor Launch

The Hubble Space Telescope is incredible and has done some truly remarkable science, but it’s getting old. After all, it was launched in 1990. Taking its place is the James Webb Space Telescope, an $8 billion-plus experiment that was scheduled to launch in October 2018.

Not anymore.

Today, NASA announced in a press release that they’d be pushing the launch of the telescope back to Spring of 2019 from French Guyana. They claim the reason is not “indicative of hardware or technical performance concerns,” but rather, “the integration of the various spacecraft elements is taking longer than expected,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington, said in the release.

In other words, it’s taking more time to put together than they thought.

The James Webb Space Telescope is supposed to be awesome. Specific science goals include peering into the distant universe to capture the light from the first galaxies and stars, comparing the oldest galaxies with galaxies today, looking through dust clouds invisible to Hubble to see stars form, and even studying the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system. These images and data will be both incredible and useful for scientists trying to understand who we are and how we got here on the grandest scales.

The change in date came after a “routine schedule assessment” reviewed all of the tasks remaining plus other factors, mentioning that the spacecraft “has experienced delays during its integration and testing at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California.” They mention that, on the bright side, they’ll have more time to test it (although that shouldn’t be necessary if there are no hardware or technical performance concerns, right guys?).

We’ve reached out to NASA for comment.

The release says that the existing budget accommodates for the change in date, so we’ll just have to wait a little longer for some dank new space pictures.
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Dayton Kitchens · Sep 28, 2017

As long as they get it right.

NAHTMMM · Sep 28, 2017

In other words, it’s taking more time to put together than they thought.
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Another reason we need more women in science -- gotta have someone willing to read the assembly instructions.

Bickendan · Sep 29, 2017

Well, at least they're remembering to convert from inches and feet to metric this time...

Tuckerfan · Mar 1, 2018

More delays and a risk of it being canceled. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/flagship-us-space-telescope-facing-further-delays

Zombie · Mar 2, 2018

Cancelled? WTF?

This is one time we can overlook the costs. This telescope is too important.

Diacanu · Mar 2, 2018

Maybe those cash rich corporations with their new big fat tax cuts will pitch in.
Y'know, with their generosity, and patriotism.

Zombie · Mar 2, 2018

Or maybe we could stop wasting a couple billion dollars on illegals who don't belong here in the first place.

MikeH92467 · Mar 2, 2018

This is too big and too important to be canceled and/or fail. Unlike Hubble this is a one shot...no way to go out on a repair mission so it's one and done. Take however much time is needed.

Tuckerfan · Mar 27, 2018

And it'll be 2020, at the earliest for the launch. If it ever happens. https://arstechnica.com/science/201...pe-delayed-to-2020-likely-to-exceed-cost-cap/

Tuckerfan · May 4, 2018

More problems.

JWST suffers new problem during spacecraft testing

As an independent review of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope continues, the project is dealing with a new problem discovered in recent testing of the spacecraft.

In a presentation at a meeting of the National Academies’ Space Studies Board here May 3, Greg Robinson, the JWST program director at NASA Headquarters, said some “screws and washers” appear to have come off the spacecraft during recent environmental testing at a Northrop Grumman facility in Southern California.

Technicians found the items after the spacecraft element of JWST, which includes the bus and sunshield but not its optics and instruments, was moved last weekend from one chamber for acoustics tests to another to prepare for vibration testing.

“Right now we believe that all of this hardware — we’re talking screws and washers here — come from the sunshield cover,” he said. “We’re looking at what this really means and what is the recovery plan.” The problem, he said, was only a couple of days old, and he had few additional details about the problem.

“It’s not terrible news, but it’s not good news, either,” he said.

The incident, Robinson argued, showed the importance of the wide range of tests the spacecraft is put through prior to launch. “That’s why we do the testing,” he said. “We do it now, we find it now, we fix it and we launch a good spacecraft.”

This latest incident comes as an independent review board, chartered by NASA in late March after announcing a one-year delay in JWST’s launch because of other technical issues, is in the midst of its analysis of the mission and its launch readiness. That review, led by retired aerospace executive and former NASA Goddard director Tom Young, is scheduled to be completed at the end of the month.

“It was a no-brainer to put an independent review board in place,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, said at the Space Studies Board meeting May 2. The board, he said, will provide an independent look at the status of the mission and identify what needs to be done to ensure the mission will be successful.

Zurbuchen said there would be a “little bit of a pause” after the board delivers its final report, in part because of a prior commitment by Young in early June that makes him unavailable for discussions about the report or additional work. He said NASA will start briefing Congress and others about the report, and the agency’s response, in late June.

That report will allow NASA to refine a launch date of approximately May 2020 that it announced March 27. Robinson believed there was margin in the revised development schedule to maintain that date. “We believe we have good margin there, and a lot that margin is for things like we just experienced,” he said. “I still believe we’ll go in 2020, in roughly the same timeframe that we talked about, unless this problem takes longer than we expect.”

One lesson already learned, he said, was the need for more NASA oversight of Northrop Grumman’s work. “We had people in the plant for a long time, four or five people,” he said. “We’ve added a lot of folks in the past five or six months for oversight at Northrop Grumman.”
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Tuckerfan · Jul 14, 2018

JWST delayed again, and further delays may mean it never gets to space at all.

With further delays, Webb telescope at risk of seeing its rocket retired

The most recent slippage of the James Webb Space Telescope, which now will launch no earlier than March, 2021, has raised some questions about how it will get into space. This is because NASA's chosen rocket for the mission, the proven Ariane 5 launcher, is likely to fly for only a few more years before it is phased out in favor of a newer, less expensive booster.

Back in 2015, when NASA formally reached an agreement with Arianespace to launch on the Ariane 5 rocket, the projected launch date was 2018. NASA partnered with the European Space Agency and its affiliated rocket company for the launch to keep costs down. Essentially, Europe provided a rocket in exchange for some of the observing time. The telescope's massive heat shield was then designed to fold 12 times to fit within the Ariane 5's payload fairing.

Last year, when the telescope's launch date was delayed into 2019, this was still no problem. But the telescope's launch has since been delayed twice more: first into 2020 and then into 2021. The Ariane 5 can still launch during these years. Further delays, however, may prove problematic.
According to Alain Charmeau, who as the head of Ariane Group oversees a family of launch vehicles including the Ariane 5, European states have created a transition plan to the Ariane 6. A separate launch pad is being constructed at the European spaceport in French Guiana for the Ariane 6, and this will allow the Ariane 5 to continue flying for a few more years—but not indefinitely.

"One can back up the other one," he told Ars. "We will have the Ariane 5 for at least until the end of 2022, but it’s not clear cut. If we need to have another launch in 2023, we can extend it; it is just a matter of maintaining the team and maintaining the infrastructure. But our plan today is to start Ariane 6 in 2020 and stop Ariane 5 at the end of 2022."

Charmeau said he was not aware of any discussions with NASA on launching the Webb telescope on Ariane 6, and the American space agency confirmed this as well. "NASA has not initiated any discussions with ESA or the Ariane Group about flying on an Ariane 6," NASA's Felicia Chou told Ars. "We still plan to launch Webb on the Ariane 5."

However, the Webb telescope could probably make a relatively simple transition from one vehicle to the other, as they have similarly sized payload fairings.
Two competing factors in any decision to move from one rocket to the other are likely to be the success of Ariane 6 and costs. For now, NASA is comfortable with the long and largely successful track record of the Ariane 5 rocket, which has flown about 100 times. The Ariane 6 needs to establish something of a track record before it flies the most expensive instrument NASA has ever built. However, it will be costly for Ariane Group to keep its Ariane 5 supply lines and facilities open for just a single launch if Webb continues to be delayed into 2023 or beyond.
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If the telescope is to launch at all, it is going to need more money from Congress.

Eight years ago, amid budget overruns that threatened the solvency of NASA’s other projects and earned Webb the sobriquet “the telescope that ate astronomy” from Nature magazine, Congress almost canceled the program. Instead, lawmakers ordered a strict budget cap of $8 billion to develop the telescope. Delays already added nearly $800 million.

The new report means that NASA will surely need another $837 million and exceed that cap. Congress will have to reauthorize the telescope at a cost yet to be determined to other missions. Among the missions that could be threatened, astronomers say, is an ambitious space telescope called WFirst to study dark energy and hunt exoplanets.
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Dayton Kitchens · Jul 28, 2018

I've doubted if the James Webb space telescope would ever make it to orbit.

But then again I doubted if the ISS would ever be completed or New Horizons would ever get underway and get to Pluto without something going catastrophically wrong so what do I know.

Tuckerfan · Jun 1, 2019

Zombie · Jun 1, 2019

Tuckerfan · Oct 13, 2019

Zombie · Oct 13, 2019

Can't wait until this thing is launched.

steve2^4 · Oct 14, 2019

Did anyone have traumatic flashbacks to Mike Teavee's demise in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Tuckerfan · Jun 11, 2020

Delayed again, thanks to the pandemic.

Long-Delayed James Webb Space Telescope Is Again Delayed

We’re going to have a wait even longer for NASA’s next-generation James Webb Space Telescope to leave Earth, owing to delays caused by the covid-19 pandemic.

Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA’s science directorate, broke the bad news yesterday during a virtual meeting for the Space Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

“We will not launch in March, absolutely will not launch in March,” said Zurbuchen in reference to the previously scheduled launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2021. “That is not in the cards right now,” he said, in a transcription prepared by Space Policy Online.

For NASA and Northrop Grumman (the space agency’s principal contractor for the project), it’s yet another setback for a project already beset by setbacks. The postponed launch is the latest in a seemingly endless train of cost overruns and scheduling delays. This time around, however, the finger of blame is being pointed directly at covid-19 and the ongoing global pandemic.

“It’s not because [NASA and Northrop Grumman] did anything wrong,” said Zurbuchen. “It’s just not going to be in the cards, and it’s not a fault or mismanagement of some type,” he said, adding that the program had made great strides recently and the JWST was on course for a March 2021 launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. And indeed, engineers recently conducted a successful test of the system’s Deployable Tower Assembly.

“I’m very optimistic of this thing getting off the launch pad in ’21...because of the results I’m seeing, [but] there still is a lot of mountain to climb,” said Zurbuchen, saying NASA and its partners will need to learn the “new efficiency” of working in pandemic conditions and that a revised launch schedule won’t be assessed until July.

A tentative launch date in 2021, given everything that’s been going on, is actually quite encouraging, and we cannot wait to see this thing get off the ground. The JWST is the successor observatory to the 30-year-old Hubble Space Telescope. Once in space, the infrared telescope will “look much closer to the beginning of time and to hunt for the unobserved formation of the first galaxies, as well as to look inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today,” according to NASA. The telescope will also be capable of scanning the atmospheres of distant exoplanets, representing a potentially huge leap forward for scientists on the hunt for habitable worlds.

But JWST is proving to be an exceptionally complex machine to build and test, as it features no less than 300 single points of failure, as Space Policy Online reported earlier this year. The telescope is currently in the integration and testing phase of its development, but the pandemic forced NASA and Northrop Grumman to slow things down. As SpaceNews reports, work did not halt completely at the Northrop facility in southern California; the company is now running five eight-hour shifts each week, as opposed to the usual 12 10-hour shifts.

The JWST was supposed to launch around 10 years ago (yes, really), at an initial price tag of $1 billion. But as Eric Berger reports in Ars Technica, the current cost estimate for its development has creeped up to $9.7 billion, which could still be on the low side. Sadly, the JWST project has cast NASA’s ability to manage flagship missions in doubt—a concern Zurbuchen was keen to address during yesterday’s meeting.

“NASA needs to do flagships. We need to learn how to do flagships,” he said. “Frankly, part of being a leader in space means that we need to do things that nobody has ever done before. In astrophysics especially, and also in some of the planetary sciences, but there’s other fields where some of these flagships are the only tools to move things forward.”

To which he added: “The challenge with flagships has been, and we’re spending a lot of effort and learning on it, is to manage them in a way that they don’t eat the neighborhood.”

In more positive news, NASA is still expected to launch its Perseverance rover to Mars in July, though the date was pushed back by three days due to an undisclosed issue. Fingers remain firmly crossed.
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Jenee · Jun 12, 2020

The Night Funky said: ↑

Delayed again, thanks to the pandemic.

Long-Delayed James Webb Space Telescope Is Again Delayed

We’re going to have a wait even longer for NASA’s next-generation James Webb Space Telescope to leave Earth, owing to delays caused by the covid-19 pandemic.

Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA’s science directorate, broke the bad news yesterday during a virtual meeting for the Space Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

“We will not launch in March, absolutely will not launch in March,” said Zurbuchen in reference to the previously scheduled launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2021. “That is not in the cards right now,” he said, in a transcription prepared by Space Policy Online.

For NASA and Northrop Grumman (the space agency’s principal contractor for the project), it’s yet another setback for a project already beset by setbacks. The postponed launch is the latest in a seemingly endless train of cost overruns and scheduling delays. This time around, however, the finger of blame is being pointed directly at covid-19 and the ongoing global pandemic.

“It’s not because [NASA and Northrop Grumman] did anything wrong,” said Zurbuchen. “It’s just not going to be in the cards, and it’s not a fault or mismanagement of some type,” he said, adding that the program had made great strides recently and the JWST was on course for a March 2021 launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. And indeed, engineers recently conducted a successful test of the system’s Deployable Tower Assembly.

“I’m very optimistic of this thing getting off the launch pad in ’21...because of the results I’m seeing, [but] there still is a lot of mountain to climb,” said Zurbuchen, saying NASA and its partners will need to learn the “new efficiency” of working in pandemic conditions and that a revised launch schedule won’t be assessed until July.

A tentative launch date in 2021, given everything that’s been going on, is actually quite encouraging, and we cannot wait to see this thing get off the ground. The JWST is the successor observatory to the 30-year-old Hubble Space Telescope. Once in space, the infrared telescope will “look much closer to the beginning of time and to hunt for the unobserved formation of the first galaxies, as well as to look inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today,” according to NASA. The telescope will also be capable of scanning the atmospheres of distant exoplanets, representing a potentially huge leap forward for scientists on the hunt for habitable worlds.

But JWST is proving to be an exceptionally complex machine to build and test, as it features no less than 300 single points of failure, as Space Policy Online reported earlier this year. The telescope is currently in the integration and testing phase of its development, but the pandemic forced NASA and Northrop Grumman to slow things down. As SpaceNews reports, work did not halt completely at the Northrop facility in southern California; the company is now running five eight-hour shifts each week, as opposed to the usual 12 10-hour shifts.

The JWST was supposed to launch around 10 years ago (yes, really), at an initial price tag of $1 billion. But as Eric Berger reports in Ars Technica, the current cost estimate for its development has creeped up to $9.7 billion, which could still be on the low side. Sadly, the JWST project has cast NASA’s ability to manage flagship missions in doubt—a concern Zurbuchen was keen to address during yesterday’s meeting.

“NASA needs to do flagships. We need to learn how to do flagships,” he said. “Frankly, part of being a leader in space means that we need to do things that nobody has ever done before. In astrophysics especially, and also in some of the planetary sciences, but there’s other fields where some of these flagships are the only tools to move things forward.”

To which he added: “The challenge with flagships has been, and we’re spending a lot of effort and learning on it, is to manage them in a way that they don’t eat the neighborhood.”

In more positive news, NASA is still expected to launch its Perseverance rover to Mars in July, though the date was pushed back by three days due to an undisclosed issue. Fingers remain firmly crossed.
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James Webb says "This happens with big launches like this, especially with other "end of the world as we know it" issues happening.

Tuckerfan · Jul 16, 2020

What could possibly go wrong?

NASA Ominously Chooses Halloween 2021 to Launch Long-Delayed Space Telescope

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?
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Tuckerfan · May 11, 2021

Will Power · May 12, 2021

I can't wait until the JWST is up in orbit making observations of alien solar systems.

Tuckerfan · Jun 5, 2021

Issues with the rocket may delay the launch.

Tuckerfan · Sep 8, 2021

December 18th is the launch date.

Tuckerfan · Sep 13, 2021

It's headed to the Panama Canal.

Order2Chaos · Oct 1, 2021

Tuckerfan said: ↑

It's headed to the Panama Canal.
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Okay, I get why they couldn't fly it all the way there, but why not fly it to like Miami or Puerto Rico or something, and then take it on a much shorter sea voyage?

Paladin · Oct 1, 2021

Order2Chaos said: ↑

Tuckerfan said: ↑

It's headed to the Panama Canal.
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Okay, I get why they couldn't fly it all the way there, but why not fly it to like Miami or Puerto Rico or something, and then take it on a much shorter sea voyage?
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From a risk management standpoint, I'd think the fewer times it's loaded and unloaded, the better.

Tuckerfan · Oct 18, 2021

steve2^4 · Oct 19, 2021

This thread has aged well.

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