Launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Delayed Again as Costs Increase

The launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the most expensive scientific spacecraft ever built, will spend at least 10 months before March 30, 2021 due to technical problems and management problems, pushing up its astronomical cost up to 30 months. at $ 9.66 billion, $ 837 million more than previous estimates, the agency reported Wednesday.

After previous delays and management issues, both with NASA and its Northrup Grumman prime contractor, a $ 8 billion ceiling imposed by Congress has been put in place and the latest overspending will require NASA that She obtained a new authorization from the legislators.

It is unclear whether JWST, NASA's flagship science mission, is "too big to fail" or could face increased opposition in Washington. The Trump administration did not weigh otherwise than to continue funding the project in its fiscal year 2019 budget.

Thomas Zurbuchen, director of space science at NASA headquarters, said that the reaction of Congress to the latest delay was not yet clear, but that everyone was in agreement that the telescope would produce scientific results convincing.

"I think it's too early to get a clear idea of ​​what's going on," he told reporters. "In general, what I believe to be present in each of these discussions is the belief that science is really compelling – we are going forward, but I think it would be premature to go to what we really have.

Last March, NASA had spent more than $ 7.3 billion on this project since its inception in 1995 and budgeted about $ 8 billion to complete the observatory and launch it on an Ariane 5 rocket. European Space Agency in May 2020. An additional $ 800 million has been allocated to pay for five-year operations.

To situate the projected cost of the JWST in its context, the cost of the very large telescope of the Southern European Observatory, with a gargantuan mirror 130 feet wide, the largest in the world, should rise to around $ 1.3 billion at the time online in 2024. The Thirty Meter International Telescope, with a mirror nearly 100 feet wide, is expected to cost about $ 2 billion.

NASA officials announced the launch delay and additional costs based on an independent review chaired by Thomas Young, a widely respected aerospace engineer and engineer. The group made more than 30 recommendations, estimated the additional cost at around $ 1 billion and recommended that the launch date be extended to March 2021.

"JWST is an observatory with incredible capacityHe said, "complexity and risk can not be overestimated.

"The recommended launch date for March 2021 is the successful implementation of our report recommendations, disregarding additional errors and built-in issues with multi-month impacts, additional sun visor deployments, or subsystems." scientific instrument. "

In other words, said Young, he is 80% convinced that the observatory can be launched safely before the new target date, but only if NASA follows and applies all of the panel's recommendations and only if no other major problem arises.

But, said Young, the review panel "believes that JWST should continue because of the compelling science and national importance of JWST". It's not surprising that NASA's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, agrees, saying that JWST is "vital for the next generation of research beyond NASA's Hubble Space Telescope." ".

"It's going to do incredible things, things we've never done before, as we look at other galaxies and see the light from the dawn of time," she said. he said in a statement. "Despite major challenges, the board and NASA are unanimous in recognizing that Webb will succeed in achieving the mission through the implementation of the board's recommendations, many of which are already underway."

From the beginning, the enormously complex telescope presented a significant technological challenge to Northrup Grumman, his NASA mastermind, with repeated delays and rising costs as engineers worked on a steady stream of technical and operational problems. Management errors.

Designed to succeed the hugely popular Hubble Space Telescope, JWST is equipped with a segmented 21.3-foot-wide mirror that eclipses its predecessor's 7.9-foot monobloc mirror, allowing it to detect infrared light emitted by the first stars and galaxies lit up in the wake of the big bang 13.8 billion years ago.

But unlike Hubble, which was launched into low Earth orbit by a space shuttle and maintained, periodically upgraded and repaired by astronauts, the JWST will be propelled to a point in the space known as the Sun-Earth Lagrange. No. 2 – L2 – about a million miles from the Earth.

As such, the JWST will be completely autonomous once launched, far beyond the reach of space astronauts even though manned spacecraft were available that could reach its distant outpost. And there is no such spaceship. JWST just needs to work.

The main elements of the observatory – the optical system with its mirrors and instruments, computers, propulsion systems, communications equipment and other critical systems – are now both being tested and tested. integration with Northrup Grumman.

Engineers also incorporate the sun visor of the observatory, one of the Webb's most difficult structures. Folded for launch, the five-layer sunscreen is needed to produce ultra-low temperatures – 50 degrees above absolute zero – that Webb's sensitive optics and instruments require to capture low-light infrared emissions.

The layers of the visor are stretched, separated from each other and kept under tension using motorized cables. During the tests, the cables proved more flexible than expected and multiple rips of up to four inches developed in the shield fabric.

The fixing of tears and other problems prompted NASA to announce in March that the launch of the machine would be delayed from the end of the year to May 2019 to give engineers more time to solve problems outstanding.

NASA also announced a series of major changes, including greater direct involvement of agency staff, both at the agency's headquarters and at Northrup Grumman, in significant changes to improve communications within the program and the establishment of an independent review committee chaired by Young.

But additional problems quickly developed. During an acoustic test designed to simulate the noise and vibration of the spacecraft at launch, multiple fasteners detached, producing more than 60 bits of debris in and on the spacecraft. At least two of them have not been found yet.

These problems, surveillance issues and others are being resolved and Stephen Jurczyk, NASA's deputy administrator, said that the agency was now "engaged" for a launch on 30 March 2021.

But it will not be easy. And it will not be cheap.

"NASA has completed a replication and determined a total life cycle cost to support the March 2021 launch date of about $ 9.66 billion," Jurczyk said. "This cost includes integration and testing, launch commissioning and five years of operation."

The previously estimated development cost of $ 8 billion will increase to $ 8.8 billion.

"The agency is also addressing this announced increase in future budget planning," he said. "The replenishment of Webb will require approximately $ 837 million in additional funding over the fiscal year estimates included in our President's budget request for the 2019 fiscal year."

He added that no additional funding is needed for 2019, but new funding will be needed in 2020 and 2021.

First proposed in 1995, the Next Generation Space Telescope, as it was then called, was to follow in the footsteps of the Hubble Space Telescope, extending the reach of astronomers until the birth of the cosmos. Originally designed with a 13-foot-wide mirror, the new telescope was expected to cost between $ 500 million and $ 1 billion.

Northrup Grumman was appointed prime contractor, and in 2002 the projected cost increased to $ 2.5 billion with a planned launch around 2010. In 2005, the launch date was further reduced by two years and Project lifecycle costs had increased. climbed from $ 2 billion to $ 4.5 billion.

Three years later, a program review estimated the expected cost at $ 5 billion and its planned launch in 2014.

In 2010, Congress ordered an independent review, which concluded that the JWST program had been mismanaged by NASA and would cost at least $ 6.5 billion to complete. NASA restructured the program and reported to Congress in 2011, the year the spending cap was imposed, that JWST would cost $ 8.8 billion and that the launch would fall to October 2018.

But this target date has not held up. Last year, after the JWST team ran out of reserve time remaining in the schedule to handle unexpected problems, NASA announced that the launch would fall to the period from March to June 2019. Since then, other problems have emerged. delay the launch in the spring of 2020.

And now, the spring of 2021.

While the projected cost is in freefall, technical issues are not unusual in a project of JWST size and complexity. Nothing like it has ever been attempted.

The telescope has a primary mirror three times wider than Hubble's to collect and focus the light from the stars that will be reflected back to a 2.4-foot-wide secondary mirror that, in turn, will bring it back to the center of the primary where the rear optics badembly exceeds.

Light entering the rear badembly will still strike another mirror that will bounce up and bounce off a small directional mirror.

The steerable mirror will in turn send light into the integrated scientific instrument module, or ISIM, housing the four telescope instruments: a near-infrared camera, a near-infrared spectrograph, a mid-infrared instrument, and a near infrared. imager and spectrograph provided by the Canadian Space Agency.

After the launch, it will take a full month for the JWST to reach its operational station at point L2. Along the way, it will begin to unfold like a huge origami. Two primary mirror segment panels will unfold to form the full diameter primary, with the erection of a three-legged mast supporting the secondary.

The radiator panels will turn in place, its high-gain main antenna will deploy and the giant five-layer sunshade will open and stretch in position to shade the optical system.

In total, more than 300 mechanical deployments must be made against about 70 on the Mars Curiosity rover. But managers remain confident that the observatory will prove itself once in space.

"It will be worth the wait," promised Zurbuchen.