Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

NASA’s James Webb Telescope faces a new challenge: Time

By
After successfully assembling the entire observatory of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, technicians and engineers tested its tennis court sized sunshield. NASA/Chris Gunn

NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is unlikely to meet its launch date later this year, according to a new report by the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), first documented by Ars Technica. The report, titled “James Webb Space Telescope: Technical Challenges Have Caused Schedule Strain and May Increase Costs,” details an investigation by the GAO into the latest status of the troubled telescope.

The report looks at both the progress made on the JWST since the last report in March 2019, and the likelihood that the project will hit its launch date of November 2020. In the former category, the project is doing well, with the report recognizing that the project has made “significant progress” such as the testing of individual elements of the spacecraft and telescope, and working to integrate these components into one whole.

Recommended Videos

Regarding the potential of the project to make its launch date, however, the report is less optimistic. There is “only a 12 percent likelihood that this date will be achieved,” according to the report, and delays seem likely as “NASA plans to reassess the launch date in the spring of 2020.”

Related

The report describes the extra time built into the schedule of complex projects, called “schedule reserve,” as well as extra budget available called “cost reserve.” These reserves are planned for on the basis that projects as large and ambitious as JWST often require extra time and money for challenges which only become apparent once work has already begun. The issue with JWST that the report seems most concerned over is that the project has already used 76% of its schedule reserve, meaning there is little leeway available should further delays occur in the future.

In addition, the expenditure of this schedule reserve has meant that private contractors, such as those from Northrop Grumman, have been employed for extended periods which has led to ballooning costs for the project.

Despite these issues, the report acknowledged the work done by NASA to respond to worries over budget and time efficiency raised by the last report. It also acknowledges improvements in performance by NASA contractors including Northrop Grumman. It concluded that it would not make recommendations for the project, as NASA has already acted on previous GAO recommendations.

We will wait and see if the JWST can hit its November launch date, but that is looking increasingly unlikely.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA sets new date for first launchpad test of its mega moon rocket
NASA's mega moon rocket on the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA will have a third go at conducting a launchpad test of its next-generation moon rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday, April 9.

This is despite the emergence of another technical issue that NASA is now working to resolve.

Read more
Three of James Webb’s four instruments are now aligned
This artist’s conception shows the fully unfolded James Webb Space Telescope in space.

The long process of getting the James Webb Space Telescope ready to begin collecting science data continues, and the Webb team has met another goal with the alignment of three out of its four instruments. The alignment process is a set of careful very small adjustments to each instrument to make sure they are in exactly the right location to receive light from the telescope's large primary mirror. A few weeks ago the telescope's mirrors were aligned with its main camera, called NIRCam, and now the telescope's other instruments are being similarly adjusted.

Webb's three near-infrared instruments (the Near-Infrared Slitless Spectrograph or NIRISS, the Near-Infrared Spectrometer or NIRSpec, and the Near-Infrared Camera or NIRCam) and its guidance sensor (the Fine Guidance Sensor or FGS) are now all aligned to its mirrors, leaving just the one mid-infrared instrument to go. The mid-infrared instrument (MIRI) takes longer to align because it uses a different type of sensor, which have to be cooled to an extremely low temperature of just 7 degrees kelvin. MIRI is still in the process of being cooled down to its operating temperature, and once it reaches this milestone then it too can be aligned.

Read more
James Webb’s MIRI instrument has both a heater and a cooler
James Webb Space Telescope illustration.

The long process of getting the James Webb Space Telescope ready for science operations continues, with the ongoing alignment of three of its instruments.

Webb recently reached the major milestone of aligning its mirrors with its NIRCam instrument, in a successful step that promises great results to come. "Webb’s alignment at the NIRCam field showed some spectacular diffraction-limited images, producing a tantalizing glimpse of the capabilities this observatory will carry for its science program," wrote two Webb researchers, Michael McElwain, Webb observatory project scientist, and Charles Bowers, Webb deputy observatory project scientist, both at NASA Goddard, in a recent blog post. "This was a major milestone because it required nearly all of the observatory systems to be functioning as designed. It all worked as well as we dared to hope, and it was certainly a moment to celebrate."

Read more