NASA Fumbles The Webb Telescope (re)Naming Issue
Shadowed By Controversy, NASA Won’t Rename New Space Telescope, NPR
“We have found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope,” says NASA administrator Bill Nelson.”
NASA won’t rename James Webb Space Telescope despite controversy, The Hill
“… more than a thousand people signed a petition earlier this year calling for the telescope to be renamed due to Webb allegedly being complicit in the purge of LGBT people from government service, known as the “Lavender Scare. … Senior science communications officer Karen Fox told NPR, “We’ve done as much as we can do at this point and have exhausted our research efforts. … Those efforts have not uncovered evidence warranting a name change,” she added.”
Keith’s note: NASA PAO is sending this one sentence statement and commentary to some news media – but not others. This is all part of Marc Etkind’s odd way of releasing news information – or not releasing it – as the case may be. There was a study done internally at NASA as to what to do about this issue. If NASA was truly going to do the whole transparency thing they’d release the results of that study. But they won’t. As one prominent space scientist suggested to me, the original name was just fine i.e. Next Generation Space Telescope. Just sayin’
Yeah, the Next Generation Space Telescope was perfect. As was WFIRST. It’s always been strange to me to honor people by naming space probes or telescopes after them. These aren’t naval ships. It’s a backwards looking practice. Scientific inventions that will achieve incredible things should do so under their own name.
There is of course, the Hubble Space Telescope exception. But there is something different between “Hubble Space Telescope” and “Edwin P. Hubble Space Telescope“. The use of a full name in some way makes it more about the honor than the purpose. The shorter version (as it was actually named) is an effective enough honorific. Yet in more recent times we got the “James Webb Space Telescope” and the real mouthful, “Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope“. I think “Webb Space Telescope” and “Roman Space Telescope” would have been better if we do have to do honorific names. But I prefer we didn’t. NGST and WFIRST are perfect. As is HDST or ATLAST.
Looking forward is going to be immense congressional and public relations pressure to name the first lunar base and the first mars base after someone. “Armstrong Base” is fine in science fiction to be sure, but for something that will be a major event in history and taught for hundreds of years to come, it really should be “Artemis Base One” or something. It should stand on its own.
I would go further beyond names too.
– I’ve thought “Curiosity” was a lousy name for a rover for 10 years. “Mars Science Laboratory” was excellent. I refuse to call it Curiosity.
-“Perseverance” is a weird name for a rover that is going to do the best science on Mars’ surface yuet. “Mars 2020 Rover” is effective and descriptive.
-“Spirit” and the immortal “Opportunity” lever loved them. “Mars Exploration” Rover A and B” captures one of the most incredible parts of the mission: we landed two at the same time (nearly), to do the first mobile exploration on the surface of the planet. The PR names don’t capture any of that.
-“Sojourner” was another bad one. “Mars Pathfinder” described the mission perfectly – to be the technological Pathfinder to what is to come.
This may seem like silly nitpicks, but the “official technical names” create a logical descriptive continuity that the PR friendly names chosen by children completely lack. There is nothing connecting “Spirit” to “Curiosity” to “Perseverance”. But instead considering the sequence:
-Mars Pathfinder…. breaks ground on new technology as a literal “pathfinder” mission.
-MER-A and MER-B… dual landers, the simultaneous surface exploration for the first time, building on Pathfinder.
-Mars Science Laboratory… now that we explored, we are going to perform detailed experiments on Mars with an even more capable rover, still building on Pathfinder in many ways.
-Mars 2020…. (I would have given it another name), continuity with the MSL, that it is based on.
To the aspiring scientist and engineer, that sequence describes a logical progression of both technological improvement and methodical science.It says something about the 25 year stepwise pattern in which we have explored Mars, starting on July 4th 1997 (yes I still have the Time Magazine cover from when I was growing up, Mars Pathfinder was formative for me).
We should give these things their own names, so that history will record their achievements under their own names, not someone else’s, or some random noun that doesn’t establish any continuity with previous or successor missions.
Actually, “Next Generation Space Telescope” is a pretty poor choice. What would you call the follow on telescope? “Next Next Generation Space Telescope”? Ok, there’s a good chance that one will be the Large UltraViolet, Optical and InfraRed telescope (LUVOIR), but what about the one after that? For ground based telescopes, the Europeans have gotten themselves into using more and more emphatic adjectives. The built the Very Large Telescope, which will be succeeded by the Extremely Large Telescope, and I guess the next one after that will be the Humongously Large Telescope. I’ve got a textbook on plasma physics titled “Contemporary Plasma Physics”. It was published in the 1950s. Never use names which will become dated, even if they are descriptive.
Mars Pathfinder, by the way, disproves your point about descriptive names reflecting the history of a series of missions. Pathfinder was the pathfinder for the landing system not the rover. But that’s easily misunderstood, so descriptive names don’t always achieve the benefit you suggest.
But, in general, I don’t really see the problem with naming spacecraft or telescopes after people. It isn’t just ships (and boats) which are named after people. We also name buildings, airports, NASA research centers, cities, and, for that matter, people after people.
There was study to build a 100 meter ground based telescope named OWL for the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope.
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AXAF, GRO, IRST & ST. Names not as relatable as Chandra, Compton, Spitzer & Hubble.
SLS needs a name.
Maybe BSLV (Boeing Sucks Large Launch Vehicle.)
Oh, heck. Keep the initials, “admit” they cited the wrong Webb, and that they meant Jimmy instead of James.