James Webb Space Telescope to seek earliest galaxies. Image Credit/NASA
NASA faces new cost and potential political challenges over the future of the James Webb Space Telescope, the highly touted successor to the Hubble Space Telescope whose price tag has soared to $6.5 billion.
A joint effort led by the U. S. with participation from Canada and the European Space Agency, the James Webb promises to offer 100 times the capability of the Hubble by exposing the mysteries of the earliest epoch of the universe to astronomers.
However, a new report compiled by the James Webb Space Telescope Independent Comprehensive Review Panel concludes the project was severely underfunded and mismanaged by the space agency’s Washington headquarters and the Goddard Space Flight Center.
In a statement and news briefing on Wednesday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other top agency officials pledged a re-organization and new cost controls intended to steer the observatory toward a September 2015 launching.
As recently as April, NASA placed the life cycle cost at $5 billion, with a launching in mid-2014.
New 2011, 2012 Funding Needed
However, the new price tag and schedule changes will require an additional $250 million in 2011 and 2012, funding NASA will be hard pressed to find in the nation’s current economic environment.
“No one is more concerned about the situation we find ourselves in than I am,” said Bolden, “NASA is committed to finding a sustainable path forward for the program based on realistic cost and schedule assessments.”
New estimates and development schedules from the new development team should be forth coming by February, Chris Scolese, NASA associate administrator, told a news briefing.
“We recognize we are in a period of fiscal conservancy,” Scolese said when questioned whether NASA will be forced to look to other agency programs as a source of new funding. “We have to work with the administration and Congress to understand what flexibility we have.”
He drew a line at looking to the Canadian and European space agencies for additional finances.
“The issues we are dealing with are wholly U. S,” Scolese stated.
Original Cost Estimates, Schedule Flawed
The seven-member review panel traced the observatory’s difficulties to 2000, the year the program was endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences. NASA focused its earliest investments on the technologies that would be necessary to achieve the project’s ambitious goals. The telescope was once penciled in for a 2010 launching.
In 2008, when the space agency was prepared to formally initiate the project, officials failed to accurately state the life cycle costs and budget adequate reserves to handle predicable obstacles, according to the report.
The telescope’s price tag was estimated at $5 billion and the launch date was moved from mid-2013 to mid-2014 to help lower the annual costs, according to John Casani, a veteran NASA project manager who chaired the review panel.
The panel found that NASA’s Washington headquarters personnel failed to challenge the initial cost estimates and seek adequate reserves in the early development period, perpetuating what Casani characterized as a “flawed” budgeting process.
The latest review was initiated by NASA following a request in June from U. S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, chair woman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies. Her request followed cost increases of $95 million in 2009 and $20 million this year.
“Simply put, NASA must manage the cost and schedule of its large scale programs to the highest standard,” said Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat. Maryland is home to the Goddard Space Flight Center.
New Breakthroughs
The new observatory was named for NASA’s second administrator. Webb was an attorney and businessman who focused the agency on scientific achievement.
The telescope will feature a 21.3 foot primary mirror and other instrumentation optimized for observations in the infra-red portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The observational powers should expose distant star systems that formed within the first 500 million years of the big bang,
Those discoveries should help to explain how the universe evolved to its current rapidly expending state. The space telescope will also take aim at planetary systems forming around other stars.
Unlike Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope will orbit the sun far from the Earth, perhaps too distant for regular visits by astronauts.
.