Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

NASA suspends work on the James Webb Space Telescope

Georgina Torbet
By

NASA is suspending work on its troubled James Webb Space Telescope due to the coronavirus pandemic. “The James Webb Space Telescope team, also in California, is suspending integration and testing operations,” NASA announced in a statement. “Decisions could be adjusted as the situation continues to unfold over the weekend and into next week. The decision was made to ensure the safety of the workforce. The observatory remains safe in its cleanroom environment.”

The James Webb telescope has been through more than its share of issues, even before the coronavirus outbreak. It has been delayed multiple times, due to the complexity of the project, and a report released in January of this year estimated a just 12% chance that the telescope would be able to meet its launch date of November 2020. With the project now suspended, it seems highly unlikely that the telescope will be launched this year.

Artist's conception of the James Webb Space Telescope
Artist’s conception of the James Webb Space Telescope NASA

The suspension is necessary to protect NASA staff, the agency said. “We are going to take care of our people. That’s our first priority,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in the statement. “Technology allows us to do a lot of what we need to do remotely, but, where hands-on work is required, it is difficult or impossible to comply with CDC guidelines while processing spaceflight hardware, and where we can’t safely do that we’re going to have to suspend work and focus on the mission-critical activities.”

Related

NASA has said it still plans to go ahead with its mission with SpaceX in May. The aim is to launch astronauts on a journey to the International Space Station (ISS) in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which would mark the first launching of American astronauts from American soil since the closing of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. Despite the effects of the coronavirus on many aspects of the space industry, SpaceX seems to be making it through the crisis relatively unscathed, with the company not announcing any delays or issues caused by the pandemic.

Recommended Videos

NASA, on the other hand, has been hit hard by coronavirus. It has experienced outbreaks of the disease at and nearby to a number of its research centers, which has lead to it requiring employees to work from home. It has also suspended work on its Space Launch System and Orion projects, so it seems likely that the planned mission to the moon, aimed for a 2024 launch, may well be delayed. The agency says it will continue to prepare for other missions such as the launch of the Mars 2020 mission, the development of the X-59 plane, and planned activities for the International Space Station.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
James Webb Space Telescope has gone cold, but that’s good
The James Webb Space Telescope.

Almost four months after launch, the James Webb Space Telescope has just taken a big step toward making its first observations of deep space.

The $10 billion mission -- a joint effort involving NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency -- is on a quest to find out more about the origins of the universe while at the same time searching for distant planets that may support life.

Read more
One of James Webb’s first targets is Jupiter. Here’s why
Artist's conception of the James Webb Space Telescope

Astronomers the world over are buzzing with anticipation for the new science that will be possible once the James Webb Space Telescope, the world's most powerful space telescope, completes its commissioning. Since the telescope launched on December 25, 2021, it has unfurled its hardware into its final configuration, reached its final orbit around the sun, and completed aligning its mirrors with its primary camera, but there are still steps like the calibration of its instruments to go before it is ready for scientific use.

As soon as the commissioning phase is complete, which is set to wrap up this summer, the science observations will begin. And this is where things get exciting, as the telescope's high sensitivity and infrared capabilities will enable it to observe extremely distant objects, even fainter than those observed by current space-based telescopes like Hubble. It will usher in a new era of astronomical observations and could help to investigate topics as wide-ranging as how the first galaxies formed and whether planets in other star systems have atmospheres or not.

Read more
James Webb’s MIRI instrument about to face most daunting challenge yet
MIRI is inspected in the giant clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in 2012.

In the long process of getting ready to take its first scientific observations this summer, the James Webb Space Telescope now has three out of its four instruments aligned to its mirrors. The fourth instrument, MIRI or the mid-infrared instrument, will take a little longer because it uses a different type of sensor which needs to be kept at an extremely low temperature -- and achieving this temperature requires, perhaps surprisingly, both a cooler and a heater. Now, NASA has shared an update on the process of getting MIRI down to temperature and ready for operations.

Webb's three other instruments are already at their chilly operating temperatures of 34 to 39 kelvins, but MIRI needs to get all the way down to 7 kelvins. To achieve that, the instrument has a special cryocooler system. “Over the last couple of weeks, the cryocooler has been circulating cold helium gas past the MIRI optical bench, which will help cool it to about 15 kelvins," cryocooler specialists Konstantin Penanen and Bret Naylor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote. "Soon, the cryocooler is about to experience the most challenging days of its mission. By operating cryogenic valves, the cryocooler will redirect the circulating helium gas and force it through a flow restriction. As the gas expands when exiting the restriction, it becomes colder, and can then bring the MIRI detectors to their cool operating temperature of below 7 kelvins."

Read more