JWST exceeds cost cap, launch has been postponed to 2021 – Brinkwire

The James Webb Space Telescope in development for 22 years, is now and should take flight on March 30, 2021. Known for its many delays and overruns cost, the JWST seems terminal for its flight to the top of an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana.

A published by the Independent Review Board of NASA (IRB) "Webb should continue on the basis of its extraordinary scientific potential and its crucial role in maintaining US leadership in astronomy and astrophysics" said Tom Young. , the chair of the review committee. "Ensuring that every element of Webb works properly before it reaches the space is essential to its success."

Relying on scientific reasons for not canceling the project, representatives continued to defend the JWST despite it becoming a money pit and a black eye for the agency American space – as well as a target of cancellation. 19659008] "The more we learn about our universe, the more we realize that Webb is essential to answering questions that we did not even know how to ask when the spacecraft was designed," said Thomas Zurbuchen, badociate director of the science mission from NASA. Direction. "Webb is ready to answer these questions, and it is worth the wait: The invaluable recommendations of the IRB support our efforts for the success of the mission."

Known originally as the Space Telescope of the next generation the estimated costs of the mission were valued at about $ 500 million, once Northrop Grumman became the prime contractor., the cost of the mission increased to 825 million. dollars .Its launching at the most recent date, the telescope will have cost $ 9.6 billion

A post realized on Twitter by Grant Trembly an astrophysicist from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics provided a graph

In 2010, the scientific journal Nature described the JWST as the "telescope that ate astronomy." [6juin1965] [6 juin 2011] ] the appropriations committee of the House of Representatives US officials for trade, justice and science made an effort to cancel the JWST. At the time, $ 3 billion had already been spent and about 75% of the spacecraft equipment had been produced. The committee noted that the project was "billions of dollars over budget and undermined by mismanagement." The JWST was allowed to continue with a budget capped at $ 8 billion something that NASA admitted will be violated.

Dwayne Brown, NASA's public affairs officer, opened Wednesday's conference call stating that "Webb is worth the wait!" This was a recurring theme during the June 27th teleconference.

Human Errors, Lack of Experience, Excessive Complexity Optimism was cited as examples of why the spacecraft was repeatedly delayed. In the last decade alone, the mission is expected to be launched in 2018 (this date was given in 2011 and the cost of this delay alone is estimated at $ 1 billion), 2020 and now 2121. In fact, the JWST has not seen less than 11 launch times. NASA representatives told SpaceFlight Insider that despite the 25 years since program design, the loss of trained personnel was not a problem.

The launch delay from 2018 to 2021 has been described as factors: 1). human errors 2). inherent problems 3.) Lack of experience in areas such as Sunshield 4 of JWST. excessive optimism 5). Some of the problems caused by human error included the use of incorrect solvent in the cleaning of the propulsion valves, the test lead errors that caused excessive strain to be applied to transducers and fasteners for the sun visor to be installed incorrectly. It was noted by the Associated Press' Marcia Dunn that during a particular test, the one involving the clips that some 70 pieces were lost – with two of them still remaining in the telescope.

The Dunn evaluation of this test was confirmed by Young. He also noted that all but four of the lost pieces were discovered and that two of these NASA could not "say only that they were." (Discovered – and, therefore, are probably still in the telescope somewhere)

"Do not get me wrong, I'm not happy sitting here sharing this story." We never want to do that, we always want to talk about success we have and if you look at our mission inventory, you see how many times we deliver missions below costs and deadlines, "said Zurbuchen in response to Dunn's question." We are very excited about of this … we are part of this team that created this problem, of course, Northrop (Grumman) is one of them, but we are monitoring its operation, we also take responsibility "

It was mentioned during Wednesday's teleconference that these problems could have been avoided with relatively simple fixes and caused a delay of about a year and a half and some 600 million dollars.

NASA has not only breached the cost ceiling, but also the deadline. Congress will now have to allow this increase in the next round of appropriations.

"The spending ceiling we expected from Congress was $ 8 billion for development, which includes the development of all hardware integration, testing, launch and six-month commissioning, which is $ 8 billion for all of this, "said Young," Given the delay in launching and recommendations from the IRB, this will add $ 800 million more to the cost of development. "

With JWST's ever-increasing expenses, we are wondering about the actual amount of the program SpaceFlight Insider contacted NASA to better understand the amount of this sum and received the following answer:

] NASA has completed a replan that has determined a total lifecycle cost supporting the launch date of March 2021 of about $ 9.66 billion; this cost includes integration and testing, the launch, serving this and five years of operation and scientific costs. The estimate of development costs (cost per commissioning) of $ 8 billion would increase to $ 8.8 billion.

Other NASA initiatives were canceled after billions of dollars were spent (Constellation and ARM)), the agency does not seem to reduce its losses on JWST anytime soon. This amount does not include expenditures paid by NASA partners on the project, European and Canadian space agencies.

The video is courtesy of NASA