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NASA's Webb telescope delayed, may exceed $8 billion price tag

If the mission breaches the $8 billion limit set for its development after a major review in 2011, Congress will need to reauthorize the program.
Credit: NASA, Desiree Stover
In April 2017, technicians lifted the deployed primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and moved it inside a clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

NASA has delayed until 2020 the launch of its next flagship observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the mission risks breaching the $8 billion cost cap Congress set for its development, the space agency announced Tuesday.

The infrared telescope designed to peer back to the early universe had been targeting a launch from South America by June 2019 atop an Ariane 5 rocket, after being delayed from October 2018. The new target is approximately May 2020.

An independent assessment determined more time was needed to address challenges testing and integrating the highly complex spacecraft, including some "avoidable errors" by lead contractor Northrop Grumman, officials said.

"Simply put, we have one shot to get this right before going into space," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. "For us, really, failure is not an option."

NASA hasn't determined the cost of the nearly one-year delay. If the mission breaches the $8 billion limit set for its development after a major review in 2011, Congress will need to reauthorize the program.

NASA has spent $7.3 billion on the project so far, and expected to spend more than $500 million this year.

Zurbuchen said the agency may be able to tap money already budgeted for operations in orbit 1 million miles from Earth — four times farther away than the moon — to cover any cost overrun.

NASA has 70 percent confidence in the projected May 2020 target launch date, and hopes to improve that level before giving Congress an updated cost and schedule for the mission this summer.

Meanwhile, the space agency said it would increase its oversight of daily Webb testing, make personnel changes and establish an external review board chaired by Tom Young, a former NASA and Lockheed Martin executive.

Among the organizational changes, NASA said Northrop Grumman's project manager in Redondo Beach, California, would report directly up to the company's president and chief operating officer "to help remove roadblocks to mission success within the company."

NASA's announcement came a month after the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported a launch delay was likely, noting that most of the time reserved for unexpected problems had already been used up.

Named for NASA's second administrator, the 13,500-pound Webb telescope is a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, providing 100 times more sensitivity. Over at least five years, it is expected to revolutionize understanding of the the universe's origins and the evolution of galaxies.

The telescope "will look at the universe in a way that we’ve never seen it, really, the earliest part of the universe," said Zurbuchen.

The observatory's primary mirror, measuring about 21 feet across, and the supporting spacecraft, which includes a sunshield the size of a tennis court, have been built. They are undergoing tests before being joined together for further tests of the conditions they'll experience during launch and in space, before finally being shipped to French Guiana for launch.

The structures are designed to fold up origami-style to fit within the Ariane 5 rocket's nose cone, then perform a high-risk deployment in orbit.

Some of newly announced delay is due to errors by Northrop Grumman that required replacements of a propulsion system sensor, thruster valves and heater.

Tests of the giant sunshield — designed to keep science instruments extremely cold so they can detect very faint infrared radiation — resulted in seven small tears to its five-layered membrane.

Engineers found that cables holding the membrane's shape developed too much slack as the sunshield unfolded, creating a snagging hazard. Springs and "dog house" devices were added to maintain proper cable tension.

Overall, the "deploy, fold and stow" tests took twice as long as expected.

With at least $8 billion and the hopes of astrophysicists around the world riding on a successful mission, NASA has pushed back the launch again, just six months after announcing the previous delay.

"It’s really a tremendous feat of human engineering, and it’s going to leave a legacy exceptional science and technical innovation for decades," said Robert Lightfoot, NASA's acting administrator.

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