NASA James Webb Space Telescope Is Ready for Christmas Launch After Series of Delays

NASA is giving astronomers one of the best Christmas presents possible by deploying the most powerful space telescope ever built on Christmas Day. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space observatory accompanying NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in orbiting above Earth. And it has the potential to change the way we examine the universe profoundly.

On Saturday, Dec. 25, the telescope will be launched on top of a European Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's major launch facility in Kourou, French Guiana, in South America. NASA will broadcast live coverage of the launch beginning at 6 a.m. EST on the agency's website.

According to a NASA tweet, the Ariane 5 topped with the long-awaited space telescope rolled out of Arianespace's final assembly building at approximately 11 a.m. EST. NASA added that the rocket arrived about 1 p.m. EST.

The James Webb Space Telescope will spend a little under two days on the launch pad if all goes well. If the rocket misses its Saturday launch window, possibilities will be available every day until the end of the year.

There's still a long way to go once the telescope is in orbit, Space.com said. JWST has to fly to space folded up because of its size. Once in orbit, it will go through a lengthy unfurling process that might last up to two weeks. And for the telescope to work correctly, this reverse origami must be done perfectly.

Scientists believe that by mid-2022, the telescope will be collecting data on the solar system, galaxy, and far beyond. The observatory will focus on capturing infrared light, which will aid scientists in studying the universe's initial origins.

JWST's Troubled Delays

The James Webb Space Telescope launch has been delayed for years. The telescope, which was supposed to be the leading space observatory of the next decade, was hampered by a mix of causes, including the pandemic and technological complications.

Initially, U.S. Government Accountability Office said astronomers planned to launch JWST between 2007 and 2011 at the cost of somewhere between $1 billion and $3.5 billion. However, JWST's prices have risen steadily over the years, and its launch date has been moved back and forth. Over time, politicians considered scrapping the project entirely due to the ballooning budget. In 2011, NASA completed a thorough re-planning of the mission, and Congress decided to continue financing the project while putting an $8.8 billion cost ceiling on the telescope's entire life. The organization decided to launch it in 2018.

"The next stumble was that it's way more expensive than we thought," Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, tells The Verge.

However, as construction slowed, expenses continued to rise. Meanwhile, as engineers began putting the telescope together and testing it in preparation for launch into orbit, a slew of problems arose. Screws and washers seemed to come off the spacecraft at one time, engineers discovered rips in the sunshield, and someone applied excessive voltage during a test, to mention a few mistakes made when the telescope was at Northrop Grumman, the spacecraft's principal contractor. Finally, in 2018, NASA agreed on a final cost for the program: $9.7 billion, including development and spacecraft operations. In addition, the agency stated that it would not be starting that year.

During the telescope's last stretch, new controversies developed. A group of scientists expressed worries earlier this year about the telescope's namesake, James Webb, a NASA administrator who managed the US' ambitious mission to land people on the Moon during the Apollo program. Three astronomers had asked NASA to rename the telescope after Webb, who served in the Truman administration as a high-ranking civil servant during the Lavender Scare, when LGBTQ people were targeted and removed from the government sector. After conducting its own internal inquiry, NASA chose not to rename the telescope, citing no evidence that Webb was involved.

After an incident during launch preparations in November, NASA moved the planned launch date of Dec. 18 back to Dec. 22. The telescope had an abrupt, unanticipated release of a clamp band. Hence, the observatory became shaky as workers prepared to link the telescope to the upper stage of the Ariane 5 rocket that NASA would utilize during the launch. Teams found that the incident did not harm the telescope after testing and inspecting the observatory, and fuelling was finished on Dec. 3. On Dec. 11, the telescope was installed atop the rocket.

The news of bad weather came shortly after NASA announced that engineers completed the telescope's Launch Readiness Review on Tuesday, only days before its scheduled launch on Dec. 24. The launch was put back to Dec. 24 due to "a communication problem between the observatory and the launch vehicle system," NASA said in an online article. The agency has since indicated that the issue has been mainly rectified and that the launch will not be hampered.

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