NASA’s next flagship space telescope is delayed again

NASA has again delayed the launch of its next-generation space observatory, known as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the space agency announced today. The telescope now has a new launch date of March 30th, 2021. It’s the second delay to the project’s timeline this year, and the third in the last nine months.

“We’re all disappointed that the culmination of Webb and its launch is taking longer than expected, but we’re creating something new here. We’re dealing with cutting edge technology to perform an unprecedented mission, and I know that our teams are working hard and will successfully overcome the challenges,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a video statement. “In space we always have to look at the long term, and sometimes the complexities of our missions don’t come together as soon as we wish. But we learn, we move ahead, and ultimately we succeed.”

NASA pushed the launch of JWST, which is viewed as a more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, from 2019 to 2020 in March of this year. At the same time the space agency also convened an independent review board to assess the future of the project, which is running the risk of blowing by an $8 billion cost cap set by NASA in 2011. Going beyond that cost cap would mean that Congress has to reauthorize the program.

Bridenstine said today that the independent review has been completed, and that the board decided that the project should continue. The new launch date was also derived from the board’s recommendations.

JWST has been besieged by delays and cost overruns since its inception. The telescope was originally announced as a successor to Hubble in early 1996, and put into development in 1999, with a predicted launch as early as 2007. At the time, the total cost was estimated between $1 billion and $3.5 billion. In 2005, though, NASA upped the cost estimate to $4.5 billion, and the launch was pushed to 2013. Four years later, those numbers slipped to nearly $5 billion and a launch date of 2014.

In an attempt to get the schedule and budgeting under control, NASA reworked the planning for the telescope in 2011 and settled on a new launch date of 2018. The price tag was capped at $8 billion. But that extension wasn’t enough, because in September 2017 NASA pushed the launch back to 2019, and then this past March the agency announced another delay to 2020.

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