NASA is delaying the launch of the James Webb space telescope until October 31, 2021
The American space agency NASA has once again pushed back the intended launch date of the James Webb telescope. After previous shifts, the launch had been planned for some time for March next year, but it will now be October 31.
NASA reports that this delay of more than six months is related to the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic and technical challenges. The postponement decision was taken on the basis of a recently completed schedule risk assessment of the integration and testing activities that still need to take place before the telescope goes into space. For example, the corona crisis temporarily reduced the number of employees, interrupted work schedules and presented technical challenges, although the latter is not explained in more detail. A postponement of the intended launch period was already expected, also because the United States Government Accountability Office estimated in January that there was only a 12 percent chance that the earlier launch period of March 2021 would actually be achieved.
The team working on the telescope will conduct some final ‘extremely difficult’ environmental tests. That seems to happen in August and it concerns tests in which acoustics and vibrations play a role. The latter will probably be tested, because the whole has to deal with quite a lot of vibrations during the launch. Following those tests, the entire observatory will be shipped to Kourou in French Guiana. This is where the Arianespace launch complex is located, where an Ariane 5 rocket will take the James Webb telescope to space. Electrical tests with the observatory have recently been successfully completed.
According to NASA, existing program funding is being used to stay within the budget of $ 8.8 billion. For that money, James Webb has to give a glimpse into the history of the universe. By focusing on the infrared part of the spectrum, the telescope will detect light from the first generation of galaxies that emerged shortly after the Big Bang. In addition, James Webb will also play an important role in studying the composition of the atmospheres of discovered exoplanets.
James Webb is placed in space near the so-called second Lagrange point, or L2, and orbits the sun there. That point is located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. So James Webb does not orbit the Earth like the Hubble telescope. The telescope is placed far from Earth, because a placement in orbit would have been problematic for targeting wavelengths in the infrared part of the spectrum. The Hubble telescope, on the other hand, is designed to look at wavelengths in the ultraviolet, visible and near infrared spectrum. Compared to Hubble, James Webb has a space-folding mirror with a diameter of 6.5 meters, compared to 2.4 meters at Hubble. This means that James Webb can receive 6.25 times more light per unit of time, and the spatial resolution and the field of view of the camera are also much larger.