The James Webb Space Telescope won’t launch as scheduled for Halloween this year — and that’s definitely a gimmick rather than a treat for the space community. However, the delay may be only a few weeks.
Last summer, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) Set for October 31, 2021The launch date of the $10 billion telescope. That tool tThe largest scientific observatory in space to ever launch a European Ariane 5 rocket from a spaceport in French Guiana. Now, however, three considerations push the launch to November or possibly early December.
During a news conference with reporters on Tuesday, the director of the telescope’s launch service, Beatrice Romero, said there were “a number of different factors” to consider when setting a new launch date. These factors include the delivery of the telescope, the readiness of the Ariane 5 rocket, as well as the readiness of the South American spaceport. Romero says he doesn’t expect to set a new release date until late this summer or early fall.
NASA plans to send the telescope to the launch site by boat by the end of this summer. (NASA is hiding the exact plans because of concerns about piracy at sea. Seriously.) The space agency’s head of science, Thomas Zurbuchen, said Tuesday that “we don’t have a lot of reserves” left on the schedule to prepare for delivery. . However, he added that Northrop Grumman, prime contractor for NASA and the Web, would fold the telescope and place it in a shipping case. He said this should happen by “late August”.
The launch campaign, which began after the telescope’s arrival in French Guiana, will take 55 days. Asked if this meant the Web wouldn’t launch as early as mid-November, Zurbotion said the assessment was correct.
The missile wasn’t ready either. The Ariane 5 Booster missile, which has been in service for more than 25 years, has been discontinued since August 2020 due to payload issues. However, officials at Arianespace, which is managing the launch of Ariane 5, said the cause of the equity issue had been diagnosed and addressed through a redesign. Two Ariane 5 launches were scheduled prior to Webb’s launch to ensure equity issues were fixed. (These launch dates are set for July and August, but delays are possible.)
Lastly, there are concerns about the spaceport itself, as its operations have been limited by COVID-19. A vaccine is not yet widely available in French Guiana, and officials say that if virus activity worsens, it could further slow surgery.
Which – which one
While it’s not a good idea to hear about further delays in the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, it’s clear that NASA is finally bringing the project closer to space. The launch of Webb has been delayed for more than a decade due to technical issues and the need for extensive testing. However, some of them are understandable. Launching and deploying Webb successfully would be an accomplished feat – deploying it into space requires 50 major deployments and 178 major launch vehicles. All these things must work, otherwise the tool will fail.
So if NASA needed more time to get Webb into space, and if ESA needed more time to ensure the safety of its flights, this might not be a bad precaution to take.
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