The James Webb Space Telescope is falling behind. According to a new report from a government agency that audits federal programs, the telescope, which is NASA’s successor to the famed Hubble, is at risk of experiencing significant delays in development. The James Webb telescope is an $8.8 billion project two decades in the making, according to The Atlantic. Originally, the telescope was set to launch in October 2018, but in September, NASA announced a delay of at least five months to between March and June 2019. NASA officials said it was because assembling the telescope’s many complex parts was “taking longer than expected.” But according to the Government Accountability Office that delay may not be the last for the James Webb telescope. “Based on the amount of work NASA has to complete before JWST is ready to launch, we found that it’s likely the launch date will be delayed again,” the office said in its 31-page report, according to The Atlantic. The project just has one-and-a-half months of “scheduled reserves” time allocated to address delays or unexpected problems, and if the Webb runs over that time, it will come dangerously close to exceeding the cost cap Congress set for the project in 2011. There is no questions that the Webb will launch, but the road there may be bumpier than everyone expected. The Webb is a tremendous feat of human engineering and it is also incredibly beautiful. It has a 22-foot-tall honeycomb arrangement of 18 mirrors and almost looks like a work of art.
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