GREENBELT, MD. The $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, now in what is expected to be the most expensive year of its protracted development, could find itself back in trouble if Congress cannot keep the money coming, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said here Feb. 3.
Were right on the cost-line, Bolden told reporters at the Goddard Space Flight Center here. Stability in the budget is critical. Its being able to know that the next year, and the next year, and the next year, right up to launch, were going to have the funds.
JWST, a flagship astrophysics mission, is expected to launch in 2018 on a five-year primary mission to observe the infrared universe from a gravitationally stable perch 1.6 million kilometers from Earth. Congress last month approved $658.2 million for the project for 2014. Before JWST entered development, around the turn of the century, program officials projected it would cost $1 billion to $3.5 billion and launch between 2007 to 2011, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Jan. 8.
Now, after lengthy delays and billions in added costs, JWST is entering its peak development years, in which major subsystems will be put together, tested, integrated with one another, and tested again. It will be, according to Bolden, one of the most difficult parts of JWSTs construction.[Photos: Building the James Webb Space Telescope]
This is our tough budget year, Bolden said. It is also the most expensive, according to projections the White House released last April with its 2014 budget proposal.
Bolden spoke to the press here after he and Mikulski, JWSTs biggest ally in Congress, held a town hall meeting at Goddard, the center in charge of building the massive infrared observatory. Both NASA employees and executives from some of JWSTs major industry contractors attended.
Mikulski told reporters that automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, which reduced NASAs 2013 appropriation to about $16.9 billion, resulted in furloughs, shutdowns, slowdowns [and] slamdown politics [which] are exactly what could derail or cause enormous cost overruns to the James Webb.
The chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and its commerce, justice, science subcommittee, said at the town hall that we would not have been able to do what we needed to do on JWST if NASAs 2014 budget had remained at the sequestered 2013 level of $16.9 billion.
However, JWST, a favorite project of Mikulskis, got exactly what the White House requested for 2013: $627.6 million, sequestration notwithstanding.
NASA and other parts of the federal government received partial relief from sequestration in 2014 and 2015 as part of the deal crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). The Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2014 (H.R. 3547), signed Jan. 17, subsequently gave NASA $17.65 billion for 2014, and $658.2 million for JWST.
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NASA Chief Treads Carefully on James Webb Space Telescope Budget