Webb Space Telescope launch was a fitting end to 2021

The launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on Christmas Day was a fitting end to 2021 – and would be to any year, really, as the turn of the annum has always been ripe for reflection. The technological marvel now rocketing toward deep space can gaze billions of years back in time upon the earliest stars and galaxies. For 2021, the capstone seems especially apt.

The instrument that lifted off from French Guiana is almost comically elaborate. Among its features: 18 gold-plated mirrors and a sun shield the size of a tennis court. These attributes will allow it to vastly outmatch in power and sensitivity the spectacularly successful Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990. Scientists hope the Webb telescope can help unfurl cosmic mysteries, such as the formation of supermassive black holes, as well as detect the infrared signatures of oxygen, water and, correspondingly, life. Only such lofty ambitions could justify the effort and resources that reaching this point required.

Mission managers estimated that the Webb would cost $3.5 billion at a maximum for a 2010 launch; instead, it cost about $10 billion and just barely made it into the sky before 2022. A last-minute, four-day delay after a mechanical mishap (not to mention a subsequent one-day weather delay) was only a nuisance compared with a quarter-century of underestimated costs, overly optimistic schedules and glitches that plagued its development. Still, not only did engineers persist with their project but Congress stuck with them, too, appropriating the funds necessary for a moonshot and then some. Now we may finally learn just how we ended up here, in 2022, nearly 13.8 billion years after the big bang.