{"id":18807,"date":"2020-07-26T08:15:27","date_gmt":"2020-07-26T08:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=18807"},"modified":"2020-08-01T11:03:39","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T11:03:39","slug":"nasa-announces-new-james-webb-space-telescope-target-launch-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/nasa-announces-new-james-webb-space-telescope-target-launch-date\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Announces New James Webb Space Telescope Target Launch Date"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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NASA now is targeting Oct. 31, 2021, for the launch of the agency\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana, due to impacts from the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, as well as technical challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This decision is based on a recently completed schedule risk assessment of the remaining integration and test activities prior to launch. Previously, Webb was targeted to launch in March 2021, according to NASA Press release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe perseverance and innovation of the entire Webb Telescope team has enabled us to work through challenging situations we could not have foreseen on our path to launch this unprecedented mission,\u201d said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate at the agency\u2019s headquarters in Washington. \u201cWebb is the world\u2019s most complex space observatory, and our top science priority, and we\u2019ve worked hard to keep progress moving during the pandemic. The team continues to be focused on reaching milestones and arriving at the technical solutions that will see us through to this new launch date next year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Testing of the observatory continues to go well at Northrop Grumman, the mission\u2019s main industry partner, in Redondo Beach, California, despite the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. Prior to the pandemic\u2019s associated delays, the team made significant progress in achieving important milestones to prepare for launch in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As schedule margins grew tighter last fall, the agency planned to assess the progress of the project in April. This assessment was postponed due to the pandemic and was completed this week. The factors contributing to the decision to move the launch date include the impacts of augmented safety precautions, reduced on-site personnel, disruption to shift work, and other technical challenges. Webb will use existing program funding to stay within its $8.8 billion development cost cap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBased on current projections, the program expects to complete the remaining work within the new schedule without requiring additional funds,\u201d said Gregory Robinson, NASA Webb program director at the agency\u2019s headquarters. \u201cAlthough efficiency has been affected and there are challenges ahead, we have retired significant risk through the achievements and good schedule performance over the past year. After resuming full operations to prepare for upcoming final observatory system-level environmental testing this summer, major progress continues towards preparing this highly complex observatory for launch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project team will continue to complete a final set of extremely difficult environmental tests of the full observatory before it will be shipped to the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, situated on the northeastern coast of South America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, the project successfully completed electrical testing<\/a> of the observatory. The test highlighted a major milestone in preparation for the upcoming acoustics and vibration environmental tests of the full observatory that are scheduled to start in August. In addition to ongoing deployments, ground system testing of the fully integrated observatory has followed immediately afterwards. Ensuring that every element of Webb functions properly before it gets to space is critical to its success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The design of a very large space telescope and highly sophisticated instruments was required to enable Webb to answer fundamental questions about our cosmic origins outlined in the National Academy of Sciences 2000 Decadal Survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWebb is designed to build upon the incredible legacies of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, by observing the infrared universe and exploring every phase of cosmic history,\u201d said Eric Smith, NASA Webb\u2019s program scientist at the agency\u2019s headquarters. \u201cThe observatory will detect light from the first generation of galaxies that formed in the early universe after the big bang and study the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets for possible signs of habitability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA now is targeting Oct. 31, 2021, for the launch of the agency\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana, due to impacts from the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, as well as technical challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",985,738,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn-200x200.jpg",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn-300x225.jpg",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn-768x575.jpg",750,562,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",750,562,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",985,738,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",985,738,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",985,738,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",761,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",600,450,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",600,450,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn-760x490.jpg",760,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn-550x360.jpg",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn-95x65.jpg",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",640,480,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",96,72,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/space-telescope-NASA_chirius-gunn.jpg",150,112,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"News<\/a>","tag_info":"News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}