NASA delays launch of James Webb Space Telescope again — this time to 2021
(Image/Northrop Grumman)
NASA has delayed the launch of its huge, highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope by another 10 months.
The liftoff of Webb, the successor to the agency's iconic Hubble Space Telescope, has been pushed back from May 2020 to March 2021, NASA officials announced today (June 27). The project's development cost has risen from $8 billion to $8.8 billion, and its total lifecycle price tag now stands at $9.66 billion, they added.
The rescheduling is the latest in a series of delays for Webb, which NASA had originally hoped to get off the ground way back in 2007.
"We have to get this right here on the ground before we go to space," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said during a news conference today. "And I just want to re-emphasize: Webb is worth the wait."
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