NASA has revealed that the JWST would delay once more, but just for a few days. It is likely that the launch will now take place on Christmas Eve, resulting in a Christmas miracle. This small piece of negative news, however, comes amid a slew of considerably more positive developments. The JWST lifted and relocated on top of the Ariane 5 rocket that will send the space observatory to deep space during the previous several days, boosting the excitement for the launch of the next-generation space telescope, the successor to Hubble.
“A communication problem between the observatory and the launch vehicle system is being worked on by the James Webb Space Telescope team. According to NASA, this will push the launch date out to Friday, December 24. NASA has announced that additional information would be released by Friday, December 17, at the latest, with the news that the communication problem has been resolved and that launch date and time have been set. We will keep you updated, so do not worry.
The JWST will be in a unique location in space known as L2 (Lagrangian Point 2), far beyond the Moon’s orbit and further than any human has gone before. This means that, unlike Hubble, it cannot easily repair, so everything must function flawlessly from the start. This is why the team is taking such great pains to ensure that everything works, as it should, regardless of how long it takes – to the credit of science, but to the damage of astronomers’ nerves worldwide.
James Webb, a former NASA administrator during the Apollo program, was honored with the name of the space observatory (1961-68). Webb’s role in the LGBT witchhunt that saw homosexual and bisexual scientists and civil workers removed from US government positions during the McCarthy years has raised questions about his choice of name. This is why it has sometimes just been called JWST instead of its full name. Many scientists believe that the next-generation observatory that will lead humankind into the future should have a more inclusive name, and many have signed a petition to do so, but NASA has so far refused.
