Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Postponed to 2021

Following an independent review, the US space agency NASA decided to postpone the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) until March 30, 2021. Designed in 1996, the JWST began construction eight years later, but is not yet in place. Ready to make room.

And the postponements have been a constant in the history of this equipment, whose release has already been scheduled for 2016, 2018, the second quarter of 2019, May 2020 and now the end of the first quarter of 2021.

In addition, the astronomical cost of making it, with pardoning the pun, has also been seen as a problem. In 2011, MPs tried to close the bill on the forecast of the time that it would cost $ 6.4 billion - the initial forecast was $ 1.6 billion. Thanks to the new delay, James Webb is expected to cost a total of $ 9.66 billion, 600% more than anticipated at the beginning of the project.

Problems and delays

The latest independent review commissioned by NASA encountered five types of problems, prompting the agency to postpone this long-awaited release. These are internal design problems not identified during the tests and inspections performed, lack of experience, the complexity of the whole system that is the JWST project, over optimism and even human failures.

Among human failures is, for example, using a wrong solvent to clean the propulsion system valves, which has resulted in a slight delay because items have to be repaired or removed. There were also cases of loosely tightened parts that had come loose and fallen off during some tests, among many other misconceptions or equipment damaged by exposure to excessive voltage.

Faced with so many problems, reviewers offered 32 recommendations to try to minimize situations like this in the future - all of them were heeded by NASA. James Webb is one of the most ambitious projects ever conceived by NASA. It was designed to deepen the work of the Hubble Space Telescope and broaden humanity's view of space - learn all about the James Webb Space Telescope.

Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Postponed to 2021 via TecMundo