8/19/2023 0 Comments James webb telescope launch date“It is truly staggering to behold how this space telescope’s cost and schedule projections went from costing the same as a space shuttle mission-around half a billion dollars with an original launch date in 2007-to now becoming an expenditure exceeding $9 billion with a new launch goal in March 2021. Then House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) opened the hearing by censuring NASA’s handling of the project. In July 2018, the House Science Committee held a two-day hearing to investigate the recent delays that caused JWST to breach its statutory cap on development costs once again. Finally, in June 2018, NASA moved the launch date to March 2021. Then in March 2018, it pushed the launch until spring 2020 and raised the cost estimate to $8.8 billion, with an extra $837 million requested for operating the telescope once it was in space. In September 2017, NASA announced it would delay launch until spring 2019. However, NASA did not meet these new targets either. JWST was eventually funded, but the project went through an extensive replan that involved setting a new launch date for 2018 and capping the cost at $8 billion. In the Senate, where Democrats had a majority, appropriators insisted on funding the project fully. In July 2011, appropriators in the Republican-controlled House passed a spending bill that would have canceled the JWST project. Congress scrutinizes JWST project managementĪs outlined in a Space News article, Congress first strongly confronted NASA about JWST’s swelling costs and delays during the fiscal year 2012 budget cycle deliberations. That’s when Congress started taking a closer look at how the project was being managed. As a result, NASA moved the original launch date of 2007 to the early 2010s and increased the project’s cost estimate considerably-from $500 million estimated in 1996, to $1–3.5 billion estimated in 2002, to $5 billion estimated in 2008. In 2005, an Ariane 5 rocket was chosen as the launch vehicle, and the European Space Agency’s Centre Spatial Guyanais spaceport in French Guiana was chosen as the launch site.ĭespite this initial progress, JWST development soon slowed down immensely due to technical and management challenges, contractor performance issues, and low levels of cost reserve. After an investigation, NASA declined to rename the telescope.)Ĭonstruction on JWST began in 2004. (In 2021, NASA considered renaming the telescope after a petition signed by more than 1,200 people requested a change in light of allegations that Webb was involved in persecuting gay and lesbian people during his career in government. The telescope also received its formal name of the James Webb Space Telescope, after the NASA administrator who led development of the Apollo program in the 1960s. 2000s-3, 2, 1…delayīy 2002, NASA had selected teams to build the instruments and a group of astronomers to provide construction guidance for the telescope. All three concluded that the proposed telescope would work, so in 1997 NASA agreed to fund additional studies on the technical and financial requirements for building the telescope. In 1996, the 18-member committee released a report formally recommending that NASA develop an infrared light-based space telescope (and that Hubble be operated beyond its original termination in 2005).įollowing the report, three teams consisting of private and public sector scientists and engineers met to determine whether NASA could realize the committee’s vision. The committee was tasked to study possible missions and programs for ultraviolet optical infrared astronomy in space. In September 1993, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, at the behest of the Space Telescope Institute Council and with support from NASA, appointed the Hubble Space Telescope & Beyond Committee. The workshop, which brought together more than 130 astronomers and engineers, discussed the science drivers and technical capabilities of a follow-up telescope to Hubble, which was then estimated to reach end-of-use in 2005. In September 1989, the Space Telescope Science Institute and NASA co-hosted the Next Generation Space Telescope Workshop. Yet even before the launch, astronomers were planning for what would come next, as explained on the James Webb Space Telescope website. When the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990, scientists hailed it as the dawn of a new age for astronomy and astrophysics. Today we’ll look at JWST’s 30-year journey to launch and ways that NASA could restructure its approach to large-scale projects in the future. While JWST represents a technological marvel, it also is a case study in project mismanagement.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |