Why did NASA spend $10 billion on James Webb glasses?

Technical challenges and delays were the main reasons why NASA's James Webb super telescope cost many times more than expected.

James Webb Telescope inside the fabrication facility.

The James Webb Space Telescope is one of the most expensive science projects in history. The original estimate in 2000 was just $1 billion, but the telescope's complexity surprised NASA. It became so expensive that the US Congress almost scrapped the project. When the telescope is launched at the end of 2021, the cost has reached more than 10 billion USD. So why is NASA spending so much money on the project? And why does it take so long? Part of the answer lies in the origin of the stars.

On December 25, 2021, James Webb entered orbit. The destination is a point in deep space called Lagrange Point 2, 1 million miles from Earth, farther than any astronaut has ever traveled to, and it's also the perfect place to find out about the discovery. life of the universe. Light from the first stars began to propagate shortly after the Big Bang, and they cooled, turning from visible light to infrared light over billions of years. That's why James Webb was designed to collect light in the infrared spectrum.

"The James Webb Space Telescope is designed to examine our entire history, from the first objects that evolved after the Big Bang to what is present right here in our shaped solar system. together with the Earth," John C. Mather, senior scientist on the James Webb project, told Insider.

Webb is huge. So it needs to be folded to fit on top of the Ariane 5 rocket before launch and then unfolds automatically in space. NASA scientists describe this journey as "30 days of horror" because everything has to be on track with no less than 344 points of possible error. Just a small hole can turn a super telescope into a piece of space junk.

The mission was a success, but 20 years ago, no one would have imagined it would take so much time and money to get it to the launch pad. Part of the reason is the need for perfection. "We just build and test, build and test. until we're satisfied," says Mather.

NASA cannot repeat the mistakes made on the Hubble telescope, Webb's predecessor. After its debut in 1990, the first images were blurred. The reason is that there is a significant spherical aberration present.

So the astronauts had to repair Hubble's mirror while it was in space. NASA spent $2 billion on Hubble at the time. Repair costs amounted to $86 million. This taught NASA an expensive lesson. So with Webb, they had to get things right from the start. This is really complicated. "That was the part that I think scared us all the most," Mather recounts.

Simulation of James Webb glasses working in space.

In 2000, the budget was $1 billion, but by 2005, the budget had quadrupled to $4.5 billion. By 2010, the year the telescope was supposed to launch, no primary instrument or mirror had been delivered to NASA. The estimated budget in 2010 was up to 6.5 billion USD.

"Until 2011, there were so many problems with oversight, communication, leadership, management, cost estimation, over-optimization, almost anything you thought was possible. ", said Cristina Chaplain, former director of the US Government Accountability Office.

Members of Congress have even considered scrapping the project. Others argue that we should cut our losses and move on. In 2011, Congress decided to cap the budget at $8 billion and required Cristina Chaplain to review the project annually. But nothing can really stop the price from going up, because nearly every part of a telescope is newly invented during development.

Especially towards the end of the project, many team members think that the contractor's workforce can be reduced and they have the money to pay for other things, but the labor costs remain high because there are so many problems. technical problems to be solved.

Although often compared to Hubble, James Webb has a mirror six times larger than its predecessor, which requires much more advanced technology and specialized conditions to operate.

"Those two things together create a really hard problem, and to be honest, some of us thought it was too crazy in the first place," said Paul Geithner, deputy project manager. know in an interview.

The James Webb telescope needs extremely cold conditions for its infrared cameras to work. Exactly -388 degrees Fahrenheit (-233 degrees Celsius). To protect these sensitive instruments from the sun's heat, NASA built a 5-layer sunshade the size of a tennis court. Think of the most sophisticated and luxurious beach umbrella you can imagine. It can withstand extreme temperature changes and even small meteors.

"The temperatures at which we operate Webb's cold side are far beyond anyone's normal day-to-day experience, and the materials get really weird at those temperatures. It's an engineering challenge," Geithner said. added.

But even that wasn't cold enough for one of Webb's cameras. This camera needs something called a cooler to lower the temperature to -447 degrees Fahrenheit (-266 degrees Celsius). NASA spent over a decade and $150 million developing the cooler. Initially, it was only supposed to cost $22 million.

In 2018, the US Congress had to raise the spending limit set in 2011. By the time it was due to launch in 2021, the telescope had already cost $8.8 billion, making it one of the largest. The most expensive science project in history.

But there was still another challenge: transporting it from California to a European spaceport in French Guiana in South America. Details must be kept secret as valuable goods become a lucrative target for pirates. It traveled 16 days from California via the Panama Canal to the launch site. The European Space Agency (ESA) paid for and oversaw the launch, as well as built two of Webb's instruments. Together, the European and Canadian space agencies contributed an additional $1 billion in addition to NASA's $8.8 billion, and that brings us to nearly $10 billion.

NASA built the telescope to last for 10 years, but the leftover fuel from the launch is likely to double its life. NASA will spend more than $850 million to operate Webb over the next five years. The extra longevity that it can achieve will of course require more money.

So far, Webb has little to show for other than this selfie in its large mirror. However, the images it will capture from the other facing cameras in mid-2022 is what everyone has been waiting for. Scientists hope that providing a glimpse into the birth of the universe will make all the time and expense worth it.

Hubble observations have resulted in 19,000 scientific articles. Many papers have changed our understanding of the universe and only one of them revealed the discovery of water on Jupiter's smallest moon, called Europa. James Webb will have a large audience to follow. "And it's the truly powerful values ​​of these telescopes - Webb and Hubble - that allow us to continue to make incredible scientific discoveries year after year," said planetary astronomer. Heidi Hammel, a member of the James Webb project, emphasized.