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NASA has announced that it has no plans to rename the James Webb Space Telescope, a $ 10 billion project named after the former NASA administrator. Concerns were expressed about the name due to Webb’s involvement in government discrimination against LGBTQ + workers in the 1950s-1960s during the Lavender Panic.
“We have not found any evidence yet to justify changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told NPR.
NASA’s latest telescope, due to launch in December, is said to be an updated Hubble. This will help scientists see light from early galaxies as well as take atmospheric readings from planets orbiting stars in other solar systems.
While there is excitement about the findings the telescope will help scientists reveal, some are still confused by the name chosen for the project.
A petition organized several months ago saw more than 1,200 astronomers and interested parties sign their refusal to name the telescope Webb.
“Leaders are responsible not only for the actions of those they lead, but for the climate they create within their spheres of influence. As we noted earlier, Webb’s legacy of leadership is complicated at best, and complicit in persecution at worst, ”the petition said.
Part of the petition accuses Webb of being involved in the interrogation of NASA employee Clifford Norton, who lost his job in 1963 while Webb was running the agency. Washington, DC police arrested Norton after he was seen speaking with a man. The NASA security chief at the time became involved in the questioning and then questioned Norton again at the agency.
“The historical record is already clear: under Webb’s leadership, gay people have been persecuted,” the petition says.
“At best, Webb’s case is complicated,” Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire who asked for the telescope to be renamed, told NPR. “And at worst, we’re just sending this amazing instrument into the sky with the name of a homophobe, in my opinion.”
In response to concerns expressed about the name of the telescope according to Webb, NASA launched an investigation. However, the agency has been quiet about how it conducted it.
“We’ve done everything we can at this point and have exhausted our research effort,” Karen Fox, senior science communications officer, wrote to NPR in an email. “These efforts failed to uncover any evidence to support a name change.”
The secrecy surrounding the investigation is an issue for Prescod-Weinstein. “I have to tell you that I am afraid that they have chosen not to speak about it publicly,” she said.
“I’m basically a NASA fan girl,” explained Prescod-Weinstein, who previously worked with NASA. “And so it’s particularly difficult for me to feel like I’m in the grip of the agency that I admired during my career and to which I have devoted part of my career.”
While the administrator who decided on the name and others said the lack of evidence meant renaming the telescope would be an injustice or that Webb was a product of his time, Prescod-Weinstein said it affected him in as a black and homosexual person.
The name reminds her, she told the outlet, “of the struggle I had to have to be okay with myself as a queer person.” And I don’t think it should be associated with the amazing thing that is the cosmos.
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