NASA postpones launch of James Webb space telescope until May 2020

The American space agency NASA has postponed the launch of the James Webb space telescope to 2020. According to an earlier schedule, the telescope should have gone into space in 2019, but NASA is now aiming for May 2020.

As the reason for the delay, NASA reports that the James Webb Space Telescope is currently undergoing some final integration and testing phases and that more time is needed to make the mission a success. The decision to postpone the launch is partly based on an assessment that looked at the tasks still to be performed around the advanced space telescope.

According to NASA, all hardware is now complete. Due to the delay, the costs for the space telescope will probably increase further. Once a new final launch date is set, NASA will review whether the $8 billion budget for the development phase has been exceeded. The space telescope has already passed some tests and an inspection after a month-long stay in extreme cold.

The James Webb telescope will go into space with an ESA Ariane 5 rocket and consists of a 6.5-meter mirror formed by eighteen mirror segments in the shape of a hexagon. These elements have to be put in exactly the right place to make the mirror a whole. In space, the telescope operates at -233 degrees Celsius; the telescope must be very cold in order to pick up the faint infrared light from distant space objects.

The James Webb Space Telescope will not orbit the Earth like the Hubble, but will orbit the Sun at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. In this place the telescope stays out of the shadows of the Earth and the Moon. The solar shield blocks the light and heat from the sun, earth and moon, so that infrared light from distant objects can be detected as well as possible. Due to the sun shield, it is 85 degrees Celsius at the front of the telescope, while it is more than 300 degrees colder behind it.