The Verge by Joey Roulette Sep 8, 2021
The observatory is set to launch on December 18thThe James Webb Space Telescope, humanity’s next big space-bound eye on the cosmos, has a new launch date of December 18th, NASA announced on Wednesday. It’s the latest among dozens of other delays for a telescope that was originally planned to go to space as early as 2007.
The $8.8 billion observatory, named after NASA’s second administrator, is a tennis court-sized successor to NASA’s famed Hubble telescope. Its 18 hexagonal gold-plated mirrors will allow the spacecraft to view distant planets and the far reaches of the universe with a level of detail that far surpasses Hubble’s capabilities.
Astronomers have been looking forward to the telescope’s launch for years, but its development has been set back by years of delays, development challenges, and cost overruns. NASA and Northrop Grumman, the telescope’s prime contractor, initially set a $1 billion budget for James Webb and a launch date for sometime in 2007. By 2011, the launch date had slipped to 2018, but that was pushed ever further, with development accidents driving up costs. Early last year, NASA’s inspector general foresaw delays due to a handful of technical challenges. And the pandemic added more delays last year, pushing the launch date to October 31st.
More:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/8/22663027/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-launch-date
