NASA officials announced Thursday that they are now targeting a launch date of October 31, 2021 for the James Webb Space Telescope. This represents a seven-month delay from the previously announced date in March 2021 for the $ 10 billion telescope that will allow scientists to look deeper into the universe than ever before.
In a conference call, NASA scientists explained that the latest delay has been driven primarily by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did NASA employees and the telescope’s prime contractor, Northrop Grumman, lose work time, but they worked two shifts before the start of the pandemic, the new schedule factors have the potential to lose additional time due to the virus. .
Due to the additional margin in the schedule, NASA officials expressed confidence in the new date. “We don’t expect to go beyond October 31,” said Gregory Robinson, director of NASA’s Webb program.
Thomas Zurbuchen, who runs science programs for the space agency, said NASA has spoken to the European Space Agency about the new date and confirmed that an Ariane 5 rocket will be available for the new launch date. The telescope will launch from the European spaceport in French Guiana.
Currently, the telescope has three months of “scheduled reserve” with the new launch date, which means it can lose as much time for technical or pandemic reasons between now and next October and still launch on time. Three months of agenda reservation at this time on a major project is almost normal, so, barring a major calamity or a substantial worsening in the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems reasonable to have some confidence in the new launch date.
Zurbuchen noted that in the quarter before March and the start of the pandemic, work on the Webb telescope wasted no time.
If NASA can meet the existing schedule and find no major additional problems, officials also believe that the project’s existing budget will cover the costs of the delay, meaning the space agency does not need to return to Congress to ask for more money.
The Webb Telescope, NASA’s follow-up instrument to the successful Hubble Space Telescope, was originally to launch approximately a decade ago, at a development cost of $ 1 billion. Since then, technical problems and delays have plagued the complex telescope.
Building Webb has been difficult because its 6.5-meter mirror needs to deploy once it reaches an orbit approximately 1.5 million km from Earth. This is an extremely complex process, and there are more than 300 unique failure points aboard the observatory. NASA has struggled to test them all on Earth in conditions that mimic temperatures, pressure, and microgravity from deep space.
