NASA delays telescope as costs rise
Human error and other technical problems have driven up development costs of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to nearly $9 billion and forced yet another delay of its launch to March 2021, the agency announced Wednesday.
Webb now is 14 years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Wednesday’s announcement follows a review of the project by a 10member Independent Review Board, which laid out 32 separate recommendations to keep the telescope on track. Those include: proper training of employees, improved risk assessment and creation of a managerial position to oversee system deployments once in space.
Agency officials said
Wednesday they already have implemented many of these recommendations and plan to continue development. In a video message to employees Wednesday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said “the Webb telescope will be worth it.”
“We’re all disappointed that the culmination of Webb and its launch is taking longer than expected,” Bridenstine said. “But we’re creating something new here, we’re dealing with cutting-edge technology to perform this unprecedented mission.”
James Webb, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is meant to revolutionize the world’s understanding of planet and star formation. Initially expected to launch in 2007, it has faced repeated delays and burgeoning costs. Wednesday’s announced delay pushes development costs past the $8 billion cap set by Congress in 2011, which means congressional leaders must reauthorize the project through the budget process for the 2019 fiscal year.
‘Not happy about it’
U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, chairman of the Science Space and Technology Committee, said his panel will hold a hearing next month to discuss the review board’s report.
“Program delays and cost overruns don’t just delay the (telescope’s) critical work, but they also harm other valuable NASA missions, which may be delayed, defunded or discarded entirely,” Smith said Wednesday.
James Webb is one of three major space projects currently in limbo because of delays or cancellations, including the the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which has faced similar cost and schedule problems.
These telescope-related problems have been so significant that NASA earlier this month 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 a list of suggested missions compiled every 10 years by the National Academy of Arts and Sciences.
During testing last month in California, workers discovered that a number of screws and washers had come loose from the Webb telescope’s sun shield, which protects it from the sun while in space.
NASA officials on Wednesday said four fasteners still are missing — a problem that is costing the federal government about $1 million per day in delayed work. The testing occurred at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, the prime contractor on the project.
“Make no mistake, I’m not happy about it,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. But “we’re part of this team that has created the problem we’re in. We take responsibility as well.”
This issue is just one of numerous human errors that have occurred during the telescope’s development. In fact, officials said human error has accounted for one-and-ahalf years of the launch delay and $600 million.
Other human errors stipulated in the report include cleaning the spacecraft’s propulsion valves with the wrong solvent, causing leaks in eight of 16 valves — a problem that happened because no one checked with the valve vendor about what solvent to use.
Northrop Grumman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Employees working on the telescope need to know that “seemingly small errors produce large consequences,” the review board said in its report.
The board recommended that individuals working on the telescope be properly trained and certified to perform the tasks they set out to do to avoid mistakes and that discipline be instilled in those employees so that “people feel accountable and own what (the contractor) is relying on them to do.”
“A signature sign-off must mean something,” the reported stated. “With this ownership mindset, people must believe they are empowered to call a halt to the execution of a process if it doesn’t look right or they don’t completely understand what they are being called upon to do.”
A complex project
In response to those recommendations, NASA said that Northrop Grumman already stopped operations and perform reviews and rewrites of all propulsion procedures. The contractor also will be incorporating independent reviews of their processes and ensure workers performing “critical operations” will have expertise and will have successful completed the tasks previously.
NASA added that the company will reward employees who say “stop” when they think something is wrong.
Northrop Grumman “needs to ensure that the errors are caught before the schedule is impacted,” said Tom Young, review board chairman.
The fastener and solvent problems were not detected through testing, inspection or analysis — they were discovered much later than they should have been. To fix this, the board recommended the audit be done to determine other potential problems that still remain. NASA officials said they are working toward this.
When James Webb first was being built, NASA slated the telescope’s launch for 2007, with a price tag of about $1 billion.
Those numbers, of course, have continued to change, but Young said the board believes the 2021 launch date is feasible if their recommendations are implemented.
“The complexity and risk of James Webb cannot be overstated or underestimated,” Young said. “The recommended launch date assumes the successful implementation of the recommendations in the report.”
Other recommendations outlined in the report include:
Hiring a “commission manager” who would oversee the deployment of all systems, such as the sunshield, once in space.
Auditing the project’s multiple risks, one of which is that testing in space before launch isn’t possible.
Defining security requirements and planning for transport to the launch site in French Guiana.
NASA said it is working toward those recommendations as well.
Meanwhile, agency officials already have alerted congressional leaders to the fact that they have breached the $8 billion development cost cap and need the project to be reauthorized.
President Donald Trump’s proposal for NASA’s fiscal year 2019 budget fully funded the Webb telescope, but the updated cost estimate will require Congress to add more money. Trump’s budget also calls for the cancellation of the WFIRST telescope, in large part because of its cost.
WFIRST is the successor to Webb that would study dark energy, exoplanets and infrared astrophysics. Congress has not yet approved Trump’s budget, so NASA has continued its work on the project set to launch in the mid-2020s. The current cost has ballooned to $3.9 billion, well above the initial projection of less than $2 billion.
Stunned scientists
The other problematic project is Resource Prospector, a rover meant to find water on the moon that was abruptly canceled by the agency in April. The decision stunned scientists and researchers alike, especially given the recent push by the Trump administration to return Americans to the moon as a stepping stone for a mission to Mars.
The space agency since has announced that it will be relying on commercial companies for future robotic missions to the lunar surface — missions that will use parts from the canceled rover, such as its ice drill, a system to search for hydrogen below the lunar surface, and a tool to quantify water that was extracted from the moon.
But the decision to scrap the rover for parts wasn’t made until the agency had spent more than four years and almost half of the project’s $250 million budget.