Why the James Webb Telescope Almost Failed

On Christmas day of last year, NASA launched the James Webb Telescope from French Guiana, the largest space observatory ever built. Before the James Webb Telescope was the Hubble Telescope that was launched in 1990, but scientists wanted a new telescope to see farther into the universe. Named after a former NASA administrator, the James Webb Telescope is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble, capable of seeing black holes and answering humanity’s lingering existential questions.[1] However, the 30-year development of this telescope did not come without challenges; in fact, it almost never made it into space.

 Most inventions from NASA have one to three new technologies, but the James Webb telescope has 10 new technologies, which is unheard of. One of these technologies is a sunshield the size of a tennis court that keeps the telescope at a cold temperature. The sunshield is packed into the rocket and unpacks itself once the telescope is in space.[1] Three space agencies collaborated on this project: NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency. The telescope, funded by the US Congress, was originally budgeted for $1 billion and expected to launch in 2007. In 2011, politicians in Congress created a bill to strip NASA funding for the telescope. NASA revised a budget, promising a cost of $8 billion and a launch in 2018, and Congress eventually approved full funding for the project. The launch date was pushed back an additional three years because the sunshield was at risk of tearing, leaving the team defeated after the public failure.

The team proposed a new James Webb program director to lead the team to victory, and they chose Greg Robinson, a long-time senior executive at NASA since 1989. Robinson, declining the position twice, eventually accepted his new role. He became director in 2018 and adjusted the telescope budget to $10 billion, which Congress wasn’t happy with. Prior to Robinson taking over the project, the schedule efficiency, or the measurement of scheduled resources to the forecast number of resources needed, was 55%, meaning that for every day the project worked, the launch date got pushed back by a day.[3] The James Webb telescope had 344 single-point failures, meaning that if any one of the systems in the telescope failed, the entire project failure. To put this in perspective, there were 75 to 80 single-point failures for the Mars 2020 rover landing. Robinson’s top priority was to reduce human error, and he solved this by involving more people to bring in a new perspective to the problem. With his oversight, the schedule efficiency went up to 95% and the telescope was ready for launch.

Taking over 30 years and 20,000 people across 29 states and 14 countries, the James Webb telescope is a miraculous demonstration of human resilience. We are now able to see the universe in a new light with never-before-seen images of distant galaxies like NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula.[4]

After his extraordinary leadership in overseeing this project, Greg Robinson plans to retire on July 29 after spending over 33 years at NASA.[5]

Although his service in NASA will be missed, his impact on science will forever be acknowledged and admired.

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-journal/id1469394914?i=1000570056859

[2] https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/HWHAP/the-james-webb-space-telescope

[3]https://help.genesys.com/pureconnect/mergedprojects/wh_io/desktop/schedule_details.htm#:~:text=Schedule%20efficiency%20is%20the%20measurement,that%20interval%20would%20be%2090%25

[4] https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-reveals-webb-telescope-s-first-images-of-unseen-universe

[5] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-webb-program-director-greg-robinson-announces-retirement