Webb Telescope delays called ‘outrageous’
Members of congressional panel demand accountability from firm
Fourteen years of delays and billions of dollars in cost increases for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope already have cost contractor Northrop Grumman about half of the $60 million it could have received from the agency for its work.
Congressional leaders on Wednesday, however, questioned whether that penalty was enough to hold the Virginia-based company accountable for the success of the country’s next great telescope.
These delays are “outrageous, and I really think this is just a perfect example of why the American public doesn’t trust the federal government in spending their tax dol- lars,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko, a Republican from Wisconsin, said during a hearing in Washington, D.C. “Why should we believe it’s going to change in the future?”
The U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology met Wednesday to hear NASA’s pleas for reauthorization of the Webb telescope after the agency announced last month it would need an extra $800 million and until 2021 to complete the tele-
scope’s development. This request pushes NASA past the $8 billion development cap set by Congress in 2011, which means the project must be reauthorized in the agency’s 2019 fiscal year budget.
James Webb — the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope meant to revolutionize the world’s understanding of planet and star formation — initially was expected to launch in 2007 and cost about $500 million. Now, it is expected to launch in 2021 and cost almost $9 billion, a difference U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, called “truly staggering” even as he and others voiced support for completion of the project.
The new schedule and cost estimate in June followed a review of the project by a 10-member Independent Review Board, which found that human errors and other technical issues committed by Northrop Grumman — such as missing sun shield screws and leaks in propulsion valves caused by improper cleaning — have driven up the telescope’s development costs.
The board laid out 32 separate recommendations to keep the telescope on track that NASA says it is working to implement. Those recommendations include proper training of employees, improved risk assessment, and the creation of a managerial position to oversee system deployments once in space.
A Northrop Grumman official will testify in front of the committee on Thursday.
Cost and schedule problems with James Webb, and its successor, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), have been so significant that NASA in June announced projects proposed in the upcoming 2020 Decadal Survey for Astrophysics must be capped at $5 billion each. Both Webb and WFIRST were suggested in previous surveys, which are lists of suggested missions compiled every 10 years by experts.
Low-cost contracts
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said agency personnel will review every step of the project’s development so far to ensure that no other human errors have occurred. He assured the committee that the agency’s contract with Northrop Grumman provides other ways to hold the company accountable.
Northrop Grumman’s contract for the project is a “cost plus award fee” contract, meaning the award fee is its profit. Since it was awarded the contract in 2002, the company already has lost $28 million of the $60 million award fee it could have received for reaching milestones. Bridenstine told the committee it could lose more if personnel do not deliver.
“To get the remainder of the $30 million-plus available, [the company] is going to have to perform and accomplish their goals,” he said. “The award fee is their only profit.”
He added that there are ways for NASA to “claw back” previously awarded fees if the company continues to make errors.
Some Congress members were not sure that was enough, saying NASA needs to be smarter about the contractors it hires.
“This is about the biggest screw job I’ve ever seen and its the taxpayers getting screwed here,” said U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-California. “I would hope that we can be more realistic in our cost assessments.”
Tom Young, chairman of the telescope’s review board, agreed. Agencies need to understand that contractors are going to bid the lowest credible costs, he said, and they need to be smarter about the actual costs needed to construct things.
“Contractors will continue to bid low if they continue to get picked,” Young said. “To change that, we need to punish those who pitch unrealistically low costs and not” award them the bid.
The extra $800 million NASA needs for the Webb telescope will impact other projects, Bridenstine said Wednesday, but the agency has not broadly discussed where the ax will fall first.
Cannibalizing other projects
“When we do these projects and there are overruns and there are delays, it absolutely makes us cannibalize other missions in the future,” Bridenstine said.
If the new NASA administrator has his way, the agency will start with WFIRST, which was designed to launch after the Webb telescope.
He clarified that he would end funding for the WFIRST telescope — a move suggested by President Donald Trump in his proposed budget for the coming fiscal year — but would scale back work to focus on James Webb.
“I think we need to move forward with WFIRST after James Webb,” he said.
WFIRST, which would study dark energy, exoplanets and infrared astrophysics, is set to launch in the mid-2020s. Its current cost has ballooned to $3.9 billion, well above the initial projection of less than $2 billion.
Other programs could see cuts because of James Webb, but Bridenstine said the agency will not need money for the problematic telescope in the coming year. The first time the agency will have to jigger the budget is in 2020 and 2021, officials said.
Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said at a presentation on Monday to the space agency’s Astrophysics Advisory Committee in Washington, D.C., that during these years, the agency expected the telescope would be in operation, not in development, so it has allocated $310 million for operations.
That means it will “need an extra $490 million for Webb in FY 2020 and ‘21 above what had previously been budgeted,” Hertz is quoted in Space News.
“Accommodating this is likely to impact other parts of the astrophysics budget and possibly beyond astrophysics,” he said, though he did not specify what programs could be affected.
Committee members voiced worry that the space exploration portion of the agency would be impacted, but Bridenstine assured them that had not been discussed.
Wesley Bush, Northrop Grumman’s outgoing CEO, will testify in front of the committee on Thursday at 8 a.m. CST.