NASA's James Web Telescope is DELAYED again! Launch now on Christmas

NASA’s James Web Telescope is DELAYED again! High winds at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana push the launch back a day to Christmas morning

The James Web Telescope is delayed again and poor weather is to blame
The new launch date is now Christmas Day, December 25, with a launch window between 7:20AM ET and 7:52AM ET
Launch managers will meet again Wednesday to assess the weather
It was due to launch on December 24, but stormy weather postponed it
The $10 billion space observatory will be in a solar orbit, nearly a million miles away from the Earth’s surface
This means that, unlike the Hubble Space Telescope which is 340 miles from the Earth, it can’t be serviced

The highly anticipated launch of NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope has been delayed yet again.

The massive telescope is now set to take off on Christmas Day, December 25, with a launch window between 7:20AM ET and 7:52AM ET – the previous date was December 24.

Live coverage will be shown on NASA’s TV channel and website beginning Saturday at 6AM ET.

NASA says stormy weather with high winds at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana is to blame for yet another delay of the massive telescope that was initially set to venture into space in 2007.

Launch managers will meet again on Wednesday to assess the weather.

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The massive telescope is now set to take off on Christmas Day, December 25, with a launch window between 7:20AM ET and 7:52AM ET – the previous date was December 24

During a news conference on Tuesday, NASA officials said the Ariane 5 rocket carrying Webb and telescope itself are in good shape, and that the only lingering, though tolerable problem was an intermittent communication relay between the two.

These last-minute snag come after years of delays and cost overruns for Webb, the biggest and most powerful science observatory ever built for space.

Work on the James Web Telescope, also known as JWST or Webb, first began in 1996 and at the time NASA had just a $500 million budget to complete it.

The agency was set to launch it in 2007, but cost overruns and technical issues forced a major redesign in 2005 that led to its first delay.

NASA says stormy weather with high at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana is to blame for yet another delay of the massive telescope that was initially set to venture into space in 2007.

During a news conference Tuesday, NASA officials said the rocket and telescope were in good shape, and that the only lingering, though tolerable problem was an intermittent communication relay between the two

Construction of the telescope was completed in 2016, allowing testing to begin, but two years later the massive sunshield ripped during a practice run that led to another postponement.

Instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope

NIRCam (Near InfraRed Camera) an infrared imager from the edge of the visible through the near infrared

NIRSpec (Near InfraRed Spectrograph) will also perform spectroscopy over the same wavelength range.

MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument) will measure the mid-to-long-infrared wavelength range from 5 to 27 micrometers.

FGS/NIRISS (Fine Guidance Sensor and Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph), is used to stabilize the line-of-sight of the observatory during science observations.

And then the coronavirus pandemic that hit in 2020 caused even more delays.

In October 2021, James Webb finally arrived in French Guiana following a 16-day sea voyage onboard the MN Colibri, and was removed from the transport container prior to recent launch preparations.

Fueling operations began on November 25, according to NASA, and took about 10 days.

The space telescope was then secured on top of the Ariane 5 rocket on Saturday, December 11, at the Guiana Space Center, as it geared up to launch on December 24.

But Mother Nature seems to have other plans and the mission is now a day later.

About 28 minutes after its eventual blast-off, the James Webb will detach from its launch vehicle and begin ‘the most complex sequence of deployments ever attempted in a single space mission,’ NASA said.

It is so large it will fold, origami-style, to fit in the rocket, according to NASA, and unfurl ‘like a Transformer’ in space, spreading its mirrors out to collect light from deep in the history of the universe.

Webb will travel to an orbit about one million miles away from Earth and undergo six months of commissioning in space – including unfolding its mirrors and sunshield, cooling down, aligning and calibrating.

Already years late in leaving the Earth for space, Webb will look back to almost the beginning of time, to when the first stars and galaxies were forming

Primarily an infrared telescope, Webb will have a wider spectrum view than Hubble and operate further out from the Earth, in a solar orbit. It will launch on a European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket from near Kourou in French Guiana

‘Astronomers worldwide will then be able to conduct scientific observations to broaden our understanding of the universe,’ NASA says.

NASA BRUSHES OFF PETITION TO RENAME JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE

In October, NASA announced that it will not rename the James Webb Telescope ahead of its launch in December, despite a petition against honoring a space pioneer who some have now claimed was homophobic.

Webb, who died in 1992 aged 85, was the second administrator in NASA’s history, taking over at the request of John F. Kennedy in 1961.

He ran the agency until 1968 and was instrumental in the Apollo programs that would see, the year after his departure, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon.

In 2002 the agency announced that its $10billion new telescope – due for launch in December 2021 – would be named after him.

Yet in recent years the decision has stirred criticism, and a petition this year to rename it has received 1,200 signatures.

Organizers accuse Webb of being homophobic, due to his role in the 1963 firing of a gay NASA employee.

Questions were also asked about his participation in a 1950-52 ‘Lavender Scare’, when he was at the State Department, and 91 gay people were ‘purged’.

But on September 30 Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said they had decided against renaming the telescope.

‘We have found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope,’ he told NPR.

The telescope is named after the late James E. Webb, an American government official who was the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968 and played an integral role in the Apollo program.

NASA’s decision to name the device after him was a controversial one – he has been accused of homophobia since his passing in 1992 due to his role in the 1963 firing of a gay NASA employee.

Webb, who died in 1992 aged 85, was the second administrator in NASA’s history, taking over at the request of John F. Kennedy in 1961.

He ran the agency until 1968 and was instrumental in the Apollo programs that would see, the year after his departure, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon.

Primarily an infrared telescope, Webb will have a wider spectrum view than Hubble and operate further out from the Earth, in a solar orbit.

Hubble is about 340 miles above the Earth surface, whereas Webb will be over a million miles away.

Research by Ohio State University claims that within five years of it coming online, James Webb will have found signs of alien life on a distant world.

Graduate student Caprice Phillips calculated that it could detect ammonia created by living creatures around gas dwarf planets after just a few orbits.

The James Webb Space Telescope has been described as a ‘time machine’ that could help unravel the secrets of our universe, with distant objects emitting light from further back in time.

The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago.

It will also observe the sources of stars, exoplanets, and even the moons and planets of our solar system.

Thousands of astronomers around the world have built future careers based on the potential of the Webb telescope.

One group of researchers hope to use Webb to witness ‘cosmic dawn’ – the moment of first light for the first stars in the universe billions of years ago.

The telescope will observe the Universe in the near-infrared and mid-infrared – at wavelengths longer than visible light. To do so, it carries a suite of state-of-the-art cameras, spectrographs and coronagraphs

About 28 minutes after its eventual blast-off, the James Webb will detach from its launch vehicle and begin ‘the most complex sequence of deployments ever attempted in a single space mission’

The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of roughly 387 degrees Fahrenheit.

James Webb is designed to last for five years but NASA hopes it will operate for a decade or more – similar to the fact Hubble has outlasted its lifespan by decades – although unlike Hubble it cannot be easily repaired.

Aside from procuring the Ariane 5 launcher and launch services, ESA is contributing the NIRSpec instrument and a share of the MIRI instrument.

The first images will be test shots, rather than of anything specific – it could copy Hubble and take an image of Jupiter as its first observation.

Up to 30 percent of the first year of observations will be aimed at exoplanets, to study their orbit, size and atmosphere, in search of alien life.

JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE: THE NEXT BIG ORBITAL OBSERVATORY DEPLOYED TO SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE

Primarily an infrared telescope, it will have a wider spectrum view than Hubble and operate further out from the Earth, in a solar orbit, rather than an Earth orbit.

Research by Ohio State University claims that within five years of it coming online, James Webb will have found signs of alien life on a distant world.

Graduate student Caprice Phillips calculated that it could feasibly detect ammonia created by living creatures around gas dwarf planets after just a few orbits.

The James Webb telescope has been described as a ‘time machine’ that could help unravel the secrets of our universe.

The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago.

It will also observe the sources of stars, exoplanets, and even the moons and planets of our solar system.

The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of roughly 40 Kelvin.

This is about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 Celsius).

Officials from the space agencies responsible for the telescope say the cost may exceed the $8 billion (£5.6 billion) program cap set by Congress.

NASA has already poured $7 billion (£5 billion) into the telescope since it was first proposed as a replacement for the long-running Hubble space telescope.

When it is launched in 2021, it will be the world’s biggest and most powerful telescope, capable of peering back 200 million years after the Big Bang.

James Webb is designed to last for five years but NASA hopes it will operate for a decade or more, although due to its distance from Earth it can’t be easily repaired.

It is 66ft by 46ft and will operate at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point about 930,000 miles from the Earth – almost four times further out than the moon.

The telescope is set to launch on a European workhorse Ariane-5 rocket at the end of October 2021, with the first observations expected in 2022.

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