NASA has announced that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be launched on 30 March 2021, delaying the mission by a year. The postponement will add another $800m to the cost of the craft, boosting it to $8.8bn. This extra cash will first have to be agreed by the US Congress, which in 2011 capped the cost of the JWST at $8bn.
A report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) in February stated that the JWST was unlikely to meet its then launch date of 2019. Engineers at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in California – the main contractor involved in building the telescope – had been grappling with a number of issues such being able to safely deploy the craft’s huge 21 x 14 m sunshield without tearing the ultrathin fabric.
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