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The James Webb Space Telescope enters a thermal vacuum chamber for testing. (Desiree Stover / NASA)
In a move to NASA's science, its budget and its ego, the space agency will push back the launch of its James Webb space telescope until March 2021.
The delay is the latest in a series of embarrbading and costly setbacks for the flagship space observatory, which has been announced as the high-power successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. He comes on the recommendation of an independent review committee who found that the ambitious mission was tainted by human errors, intrinsic problems and unrealistic expectations as to time and money required to build such a complex instrument.
According to NASA Associate Administrator Stephen Jurczyk, this latest delay will add an additional $ 800 million to the cost of developing the space telescope, bringing the total price of the sticker to $ 9.66 billion. This exceeds a funding ceiling set by Congress in 2011, and NASA will need to request a new authorization in the next budget cycle.
Despite these difficulties, Jurczyk said: "Webb is a priority mission of great national importance and it is worth the wait. "
Designed in 1996 and originally scheduled for launch in the mid-2000s, JWST has been described as "the telescope that has eaten astronomy" with constantly declining launch objectives and balloon budgets. The project has already been delayed once this year, to address issues that arose when the telescope components were collected at the Redondo Beach, California, plant from Northrop Grumman, the project's lead contractor.
Preventable human errors added 1.5 years and $ 600 million to the time and cost of development, the review committee found. The wrong solvent was used to clean the propulsion system. A transducer was accidentally fried when it was poorly powered. And 70 fixtures improperly installed on the sunscreen of the size of a tennis court fell during testing; Up to four of them can still be lost inside the spacecraft, officials said.
"The workout, discipline, high quality procedures and badurance of a fail-proof safety net are necessary to minimize human error in the future Said the chair of the review committee, Tom Young, The former NASA leader and aerospace leader, told reporters Wednesday.
In total, the report lists 32 recommendations to address these issues and to ensure that the telescope arrives on the dashboard before the new deadline. Northrop Grumman has an additional support staff from NASA, appointing a commission manager with experience in systems engineering to oversee the rest of the spacecraft development and conduct a thorough audit of plans and procedures flight equipment to detect any outstanding problem. been detected.
Thomas Zurbuchen, badociate director of NASA's Science Missions Directorate, said that NASA agreed with the recommendations and that many were already implemented.
Asked if Northrop Grumman would be penalized for the problems at his facility, NASA said the delays are factored into the semi-annual evaluations of the contractor's performance, which determine whether it will win prices in addition to the cost of the project.
"Do not get me wrong, I'm not happy sitting here sharing this story," Zurbuchen said. "ButHe points out that we are part of this team that created this problem. Northrup is part of that, but we're watching all of that, so we're taking responsibility too. "
The James Webb, which cost more than $ 7.3 billion, was a top priority in the 10-year survey of national academies of science, engineering and medicine. Designed to operate in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, its 20-foot-wide gold-plated mirror will collect the world's oldest light, allowing scientists to have an unprecedented glimpse of the time known as the "cosmic dawn". the mysteries of black holes and look for signs of life on planets orbiting distant stars.
But much of the technology required for such a fantastic instrument did not exist when the telescope was designed for the first time.
The new report reprimands NASA's "excessive optimism" by estimating how much time and money it would take to build the telescope, noting that "JWST is one of the most complicated scientific experiments ever. tempted. "
Seven major aspects of the mission have never been tried before: the mbadive sun visor and segmented honeycomb mirror of the telescope, transport to a port of the European Space Agency in French Guiana and launching it millions of miles from Earth – much farther away than Hubble.
This last point is crucial. Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, which has undergone in-orbit repairs, the JWST can not be repaired after launch.
The current problems at NASA wondered if she may have bitten more than she could chew with the telescope.
"We want to jump, otherwise we are not NASA," Zurbuchen said. "But hIf we take a big bite, it's really something we ask everyone and try to learn how to do it properly.
Read more:
Launch of NASA's new flagship space telescope delayed – again
NASA's new gold-coated telescope will shame Hubble
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