Bad News For Webb Space Telescope (Update)
NASA Hosts Media Teleconference on Status of James Webb Space Telescope
NASA’s Webb Observatory Requires More Time for Testing and Evaluation; New Launch Window Under Review
“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope currently is undergoing final integration and test phases that will require more time to ensure a successful mission. After an independent assessment of remaining tasks for the highly complex space observatory, Webb’s previously revised 2019 launch window now is targeted for approximately May 2020.”
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“biggest astronomical science telescope ever built”
What about the Keck 10 meter telescopes? They’re not toys.
They should have said “space telescope”. JWST is not very large by modern standards for ground-based telescopes – everyone and their brother has an 8-meter these days, and in fact the spatial resolution with AO from Keck is higher than JWST, albeit much less stable. With the descope the JWST primary isn’t even that huge a step up from HST. However, the achievable noise floor from JW will be much lower than from the ground, and in the mid-IR there will be no comparison.
I agree….
Let me guess. It is going to cost more that expected. It will take longer to build than expected. But we have too much invested in it to abandon it and doing so will spell the end of American leadership in science, so we must continue to spend money on it.
Is it any better or worse than the money wasted on F-35?
At least the F-35 is able to be justified under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution – “to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” What is the Constitutional justification for funding a space telescope? How does it provide for the general welfare of the United States?
And just how does it do that these days, when our biggest enemies fight us with IEDs, against which a F-35 is quite ineffective?…I know Keith, I know…Wrong forum…
So, what you’re saying is good science doesn’t promote the general welfare?
You probably would have been better off with, “To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy…”
You’d have to justify the Air Force, since aviation didn’t exist at the time the Constitution was written. But “general welfare”, and there is some debate over whether or not this clause is a blank check.
I’m trying to remember how Jefferson justified the Lewis and Clarke expedition. It wasn’t the power to tax and spend, since that was more narrowly interpreted back then. I think it might have been establishing post offices and post roads, since surveys are necessary and proper before building roads.
Yes, when it was just the NGST in 1997 it was promised to cost only $500 million. The last estimate was around $8 billion if I recall…
They have become very adept at moving the goalposts.
That’s what happens when you make estimates on tech that hasn’t been developed yet. And undoubtedly there are overhead and bureaucratic cost issues that need to be dealt with…
Actually, based on past projects, you can make a reasonable guess at the unexpected costs. At least to within 50% or so. In any case, technically, beyond a certain point in the schedule, missions aren’t supposed to be doing technology development.
JWST passed its Preliminary Design Review in March 2008. At that point, all the hardware is supposed to be at TRL 6 or higher, which means it’s been prototyped and successfully tested in the relevant environment (e.g. a thermal vacuum chamber.) After that, technology that hasn’t been developed yet should not be an issue. At that point, JSWT’s estimated cost was $5.1 billion.
and it was also supposed to launch in 2010. so $8B and 10 years over budget and yet no heads roll for this stellar “project management”
Look at MSL/Curiosity. No heads rolled over that, and it was almost as bad of a management disaster. Once the project works, and they can clearly show it’s an engineering and science triumph, people won’t remember it was a management failure.
I have an idea where this money can come from and it starts with a “W”.
What will be cancelled?
I’d seen hints on Twitter that bad news was coming. When a super duper new satellite has to work perfectly the first time and isn’t designed to be serviced in any way, costs skyrocket and schedules slip.
there is just so much to go wrong. At first I thought the launch would be butt puckering, and then I thought about all the other moments in this telescope’s first moments of life…
May 2020 launch.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-…
8 billion… Space shuttles are only 2 Billion each. But that’s about two SLS launches/infrastructure costs.. The issues deal with the ISIM and date back to 2005 and some very bad work done by NG. This program promised cutting edge science and it may still deliver (if it ever gets delivered). But basic program management is missing or underperforming.
This should not have been discovered at such a late date. Odds are its been know for sometime, but held for political reason until they had to get it out. None of this is new development. Anyone remember the original cost of this mission?
Which original cost? I think NASA would officially say $5.1 billion based on the 2008 estimate. That’s when the design was officially far enough along for a realistic cost estimate. Others would say $500 million from the original concept in 1996. But lost of things changed between original concept and the preliminary design.
For reference, the USS Gerald Ford cost $12.8 billion, plus $4.7 billion in non-recurring engineering. So JWST isn’t as expensive as a very high-end aircraft carrier. On the other hand, the cost overruns since 2008 ($3.7 billion) are worth about 20 astrophysics Medium Explorer missions. Yes, I know there are things JWST will be able to do which an Explorer can’t. But I’m not convinced those things are as important as all the things 20 Explorers could do.
If there are any further delays it is conceivable that this could turn into a race between the launch of JWST and the first launch of a privately funded mission to Mars. If you had made that prediction ten years ago you probably would have been laughed out of the room.
At this point, some innovative leader from the commercial space sector needs to step in and do it cheaper, better and faster.. sort of like what SpaceX is doing with Falcon Heavy in comparison to NASA’s SLS.
I’m fully expecting the May 2020 date to slip as well. NASA have badly mismanaged this project, which was badly designed from the outset (no possibility of servicing – who thought that would be a good move??).
Why would someone from the commercial space sector step in? It isn’t as if there is a big market for astronomical data. It isn’t as if someone could build a competing design, fly it sooner than NASA could get JWST up, and expect NASA to say, “Thank you for showing us up, here’s $1 billion for doing it faster and cheaper than we could.”
What might help would be rich eccentrics (or rich egotists) who want their name on a prestigious space telescope. That’s how many ground-based observatories were funded, and there are a surprising number of people with half a billion to a billion dollars to spare.
The Jeff Bezos Observatory? He needs something to test out the 3 stage New Glenn.
Mr. Bezos is one person who could spare half a billion on something like that. Paul Allen is another. Most of the people with that much money are, like Mr. Gates, more focused on more down-to-Earth causes. But that doesn’t mean the money isn’t out there for extraterrestrial science.
JWST is delay long enough for the possibility of servicing to manifested with SpaceX and their BFS around the mid 2020s.
Heck, there is even a chance that a BFS could place the JWST at L2 if the launch date slips further to the right. The Ariane 5 ECA is suppose to be phased out around 2022. Moving the the JWST to either the Ariane 64 or something else might just cost about the same.
It’s easy to use this as an example in the on-going discussion about the role of government.
It’s also a cheap shot. And it neglects some very important points, chief among which would be, not only the paucity of private funds, but the inability to direct private funds in a consensus-derived direction.
In other words, there are many things that the government does better. The work here isn’t in moving this critter, or future projects, to the private sector; the work here is to figure out what the f**k went wrong, and to kick some asses for putting in jeopardy the entire notion that government funded efforts represent policy errors. They do not.
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And, yes, I know that there are some here ready to cite examples of privately funded research. I get the point. There is plenty of room. And there have been valuable private contributions. In the modern space era, though, private research cannot begin to compare to Voyager, et.al.
I also know that when the James Webb is proudly flying I can look at it and feel some small sense of ownership. The Allen Array? Not so much.
In terms of what went wrong, let me toss out an idea that may make me unpopular. Spacecraft, at least scientific ones, cost whatever the funding source is willing to pay. If it’s a Discovery mission, it will cost $450 to $500 million (adjusted for inflation.) If essentially the same concept were selected as a New Frontiers mission, it would cost $1 billion and the additional money would be spent on a modest improvements in capabilities and reliability. If, somehow, essentially the same concept were selected as a Medium Explorer, they would shoehorn into the $180 million cost cap, making moderate sacrifices to capabilities and reliability. Note that I’d be hard pressed to think of a concept which could actually be funded by Explorer (astrophysics and heliophysics) and New Frontiers (which must be on a short list of planetary missions.) I know that’s not how it’s supposed to work, but that’s how it seems to work in practice.
Well, as predicted, I got the following email today at 10:26 MDT (12:26 EDT). It’s from the Space Telescope Science Institute, and sent to their mailing list for interested scientists. The subject was “JWST Launch Delay and Change to JWST Cycle 1 Proposal Deadline.” For reference, the Cycle 1 Guest Observer proposal deadline used to be April 6 of this year.
Dear colleagues,
Based on recommendations made by the JWST Standing Review Board, NASA is re-scheduling JWST’s launch window for 2020. Given those circumstances, STScI will delay the Cycle 1 GO/AR proposal deadline until no earlier than February 1 2019. A revised proposal schedule will be developed in consultation with the JWST Users Committee, the JWST Project and representatives from the European and Canadian Space Agencies. Proposals already submitted in response to the Cycle 1 Call will not be carried over and will need to be resubmitted.
Uhhh…
I don’t see direct competition with JWST, but other methods of doing optical/UV/IR astronomy that would be more evolutionary and nvolve less risk might be considered, such as mounting small and medium aperture instruments on the ISS.
You really want a free flying telescope. One of the advantages of a space telescope (perhaps the least mentioned) is the lack of vibration. That is a real bonus for pointing stability and therefore resolution for long integrations. If the telescope is attached to something with motors whirring and astronauts moving around, you lose that. Even within an infrared instrument, people put a substantial amount of work into cryocoolers which keep the detector cold without adding vibration.
Also, the environment around the ISS is really dirty. I know people who have flown IR instruments on the ISS. It was unusable. The other reason most IR telescopes now head to an L-point or, like Spitzer, are in earth-trailing orbit is to get away from the earth, which is a monstrous heat load.