A look in the space is worth the wait Guest comment

I have just returned from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and I have exciting news: the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has a new launch date.

JWST is the next … generation, flagship telescope, built to replace the Hubble Space Telescope and able to go back in time to the very first events of our universe. The telescope eclipses the Hubble. At 21 feet in diameter, it is about as wide as a regulatory pickleball field – in case you want to go to Mt. Ogden Park for comparison.

And Utah is literally everywhere in this thing. The beryllium used to make composite mirrors was mined right here in the state of Beehive. In addition, the "backplane" of the three-stage telescope was developed by ATK in Magna under contract with Northrup Grumman. This rigid structure must maintain its shape to better than 1 / 10,000 of the diameter of a human hair up to -400 F. The structure required that all new manufacturing methods develop.

So, yes, Utah – especially the engineers from Utah – has a lot to be proud of.

There is some bad news. The launch date has been postponed for almost three years.

You may be wondering why I am so excited to postpone my favorite telescope to March 30, 2021. But after a careful review, NASA discovered that But, as has recently said Jim Bridenstine, director of NASA, at a recent announcement on YouTube, "the Webb Telescope will be worth it."

help review the history of the most popular instrument NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope. The National Academy of Sciences first advocated such a device in 1969, realizing that a large telescope in the space would be safe from the hbadle of bad weather and weather. distorting effects of the Earth's atmosphere. Congress approved the budget in 1977, and Hubble was prepared for launch in 1986. Unfortunately, the launch was delayed due to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The instrument, kept at Lockheed Martin, was finally released in 1990.

The badysis of the first blurred images revealed a manufacturing defect in the primary mirror of the telescope. While still making a number of important discoveries, Hubble operated at a reduced capacity until a maintenance mission in 1993 installed corrective lenses to correct Hubble's myopic vision and the bring back to the original specifications.

Since then, we have a quarter century of unmatched astronomical discoveries, since the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, revealing the most distant galaxies of the universe, to detect the elements that make up the atmospheres of planets orbiting around from other stars.

Most of them have trouble remembering these early hurdles, given the success of everything that followed.

even more critical. Unlike Hubble, JWST will orbit much farther from Earth, beyond the capabilities of our astronauts to visit and repair mistakes.

Of course, there is the question of funding. NASA says an additional $ 1.3 billion may be needed, in addition to the $ 8.7 billion already allocated. Yes, it's a total of $ 10 billion, including operations.

While you clean the orange juice you just spit on the breakfast table, let's take a moment to think. This $ 10 billion covers all up-to-date development costs, plus the additional work needed to prepare the JWST flight by 2021 and the operations for its 10-year life. If we consider the development started in 2002, this represents a little over $ 300 million a year, less than 2% of NASA's budget for 2017.

This is still a lot of Money, but you remember that almost every dollar is spent paying people to do incredible things, and many of them live here in Utah.

So, for my part, I want to be patient while NASA does what it does best: develop remarkable instruments capable of doing what humans have never done before. Honestly, $ 10 billion is a small price to pay to be part of a country ready to scrutinize the depths of space to understand the very origins of the universe.

It's worth it, and with time this mission is accomplished, we will not even remember the cost in time or money.

John Armstrong, Ph.D., is an badociate professor of physics at Weber State University.