An artist’s impression of the JWST once it is fully deployed.Credit:Adriana Manrique Gutierrez/NASA
Unlike the Hubble,which NASA managed to repair in 1993 by sending shuttle astronauts to fix its dodgy optics,the JWST will be in an orbit more than a million kilometres away,so if something goes wrong,that’s $10 billion dollars and 25 years wasted on a useless telescope floating around for eternity. It will be simply too far away for any possibility of repair.
Then again,if it works,it will be the finest telescope ever built,and revolutionise astronomy.
The hurdles and controversy have not been purely technical or budgetary. Earlier this year hundreds of scientists and academics called for the telescope to be renamed. James Webb was NASA’s administrator in the heady days of the 1960s,and the telescope was named after him by his successor (such things are usually named after astronomers),and now it appears that Webb was deeply homophobic and is thought to have ruined the careers of several senior NASA staff during his tenure due to his loathing of gays.
But even scathing editorials inScientific American andNature failed to sway NASA,and with the countdown well under way,it’s a little late in the day to change the name now.
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Nonetheless,NASA has named its next two space telescope missions after pioneering female astronomers,one black,a notion that would have seemed bizarre to James Webb in the ’60s.