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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday March 04 2018, @04:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the easier-to-correct-down-here dept.

The U.S. Government Acountability [sic] Office (GAO) has warned that the launch of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is likely to be delayed again, which could cause the budget cap set by the U.S. Congress to be exceeded:

The U.S. Government Acountability [sic] Office (GAO), a non-partisan group that investigates federal spending and performance, has issued a report on the James Webb Space Telescope that has astronomers worried. "It's likely the launch date will be delayed again," the report concludes — an ominous statement, given that any further delays could risk project cancellation.

Last year NASA announced a delay in the telescope's launch to sometime between March and June 2019. The 5- to 8-month delay came from problems integrating spacecraft components, especially its complex, five-layered sunshield, which must unfold perfectly when the telescope is deployed. Right after requesting the change in launch readiness date, the mission learned of further delays from its contractor, Northrum Grumman, due to "lessons learned from conducting deployment exercises of the spacecraft element and sunshield."

The mission now has 1.5 months of schedule reserve remaining, the GAO finds. Delays during integration and testing are common, "the phase in development where problems are most likely to be found and schedules tend to slip." The project has a total of five phases of integration and testing, and has made significant progress on phases three and four, with the fifth phase beginning in July.

GAO's 31-page report, February 2018: JWST: Integration and Test Challenges Have Delayed Launch and Threaten to Push Costs Over Cap.

Also at Science Magazine.

Previously: Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Delayed to Spring 2019
Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Could be Further Delayed

Related: James Webb Space Telescope Vibration Testing Completed
NASA Considering Flagship Space Telescope Options for the 2030s
WFIRST Space Observatory Could be Scaled Back Due to Costs
JWST: Too Big to Fail?
Trump Administration Budget Proposal Would Cancel WFIRST


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  • (Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday March 05 2018, @01:13AM

    by Virindi (3484) on Monday March 05 2018, @01:13AM (#647805)

    This does not in any way address my point: that more testing does not necessarily equate to better reliability. The Challenger report merely discusses institutional attitudes of "faith" and "not my problem".

    I never argued against reliability, or trying to make the best design possible. But the path towards getting a better design than now is not always to just throw more dollars and hours into contrived testing and list ticking. The answers to problems in the real world are never so simple; it requires a judgment call. And after such insane cost and time overruns, it is natural to ask if such a judgment call was even considered or if the institution is just on bureaucratic autopilot.

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