Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent
@BBCAmos
11/23/2021
The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has been put back by at least four days to allow for more checks.
It was to have been sent into orbit on 18 December and will now go up no earlier than the 22nd of the month.
A US space agency statement said an "incident" had occurred during launch preparations that induced a sudden vibration in the observatory.
A firm date for lift-off, on an Ariane rocket, would be confirmed following the investigation, NASA added.
JWST is the $10bn (£7.5bn; €9bn) successor to the veteran Hubble telescope. It's been designed to look deeper into the Universe than its predecessor and, as a consequence, look further back in time - more than 13.5 billion years ago. The aim is to see the first stars to light up the cosmos.
Scientists also expect to use its more advanced capabilities to study the atmospheres of distant planets in the hope that signs of life might be detected through their off gassing.
Engineers there were in the process of attaching the telescope to its launch adapter - the large ring that will hold it in place atop its rocket - when a securing clamp unexpectedly popped open.
The concern is the event will have sent a sharp mechanical shock through the telescope.
The US space agency statement read: "A NASA-led anomaly review board was immediately convened to investigate and instituted additional testing to determine with certainty the incident did not damage any components. Nasa and its mission partners will provide an update when the testing is completed at the end of this week."
Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, the director of science at NASA, said sensors that would normally be put on the telescope during transport had been taken off.
"Just for sheer caution what we have done... [is go back] to a small number of subsystems and just do the functional tests to make sure that nothing happened as this energy went into the [telescope]," he told reporters.
"When you work on a $10bn telescope, conservatism is the order of the day."
See: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59388109
Yes, conservatism rules the day when NASA is approaching the most expensive and the most complicated space telescope ever launched.
Hartmann352
Science correspondent
@BBCAmos
11/23/2021
The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has been put back by at least four days to allow for more checks.
It was to have been sent into orbit on 18 December and will now go up no earlier than the 22nd of the month.
A US space agency statement said an "incident" had occurred during launch preparations that induced a sudden vibration in the observatory.
A firm date for lift-off, on an Ariane rocket, would be confirmed following the investigation, NASA added.
JWST is the $10bn (£7.5bn; €9bn) successor to the veteran Hubble telescope. It's been designed to look deeper into the Universe than its predecessor and, as a consequence, look further back in time - more than 13.5 billion years ago. The aim is to see the first stars to light up the cosmos.
Scientists also expect to use its more advanced capabilities to study the atmospheres of distant planets in the hope that signs of life might be detected through their off gassing.
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Engineers there were in the process of attaching the telescope to its launch adapter - the large ring that will hold it in place atop its rocket - when a securing clamp unexpectedly popped open.
The concern is the event will have sent a sharp mechanical shock through the telescope.
The US space agency statement read: "A NASA-led anomaly review board was immediately convened to investigate and instituted additional testing to determine with certainty the incident did not damage any components. Nasa and its mission partners will provide an update when the testing is completed at the end of this week."
Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, the director of science at NASA, said sensors that would normally be put on the telescope during transport had been taken off.
"Just for sheer caution what we have done... [is go back] to a small number of subsystems and just do the functional tests to make sure that nothing happened as this energy went into the [telescope]," he told reporters.
"When you work on a $10bn telescope, conservatism is the order of the day."
See: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59388109
Yes, conservatism rules the day when NASA is approaching the most expensive and the most complicated space telescope ever launched.
Hartmann352
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