[Image above] Dec. 25, 2021: Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket launches with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope onboard from the ELA-3 Launch Zone of Europe’s Spaceport at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. Credit:NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
2021年12月25日，天文学家收到了三十年的圣诞节礼物 -James Webb太空望远镜（JWST）的发布.
JWST is NASA’s latest flagship mission, developed with contributions from the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. Intended to succeed the Hubble Space Telescope, JWST features improved infrared resolution to seek light from the first galaxies in the early universe and to explore our own solar system, as well as planets orbiting other stars. Learn more about JWST’s capabilities in the video below.
While JWST represents a technological marvel, it also is a case study in project mismanagement. Today we’ll look at JWST’s 30-year journey to launch and ways that NASA could restructure its approach to large-scale projects in the future.
1990s—Start of an idea
When the哈勃太空望远镜科学家于1990年成立，称其为天文学和天体物理学的新时代的曙光。然而，正如詹姆斯·韦伯（James Webb）太空望远镜上所解释的那样，甚至在发布之前，天文学家都在计划下一步website.
1989年9月，太空望远镜科学学院和NASA共同主持了下一代太空望远镜研讨会。该研讨会汇集了130多名天文学家和工程师，讨论了Hubble的后续望远镜的科学驱动力和技术能力，然后估计该望远镜在2005年达到了使用。
1993年9月，在太空望远镜研究所理事会的要求下，在NASA的支持下，天文学研究协会任命了哈勃太空望远镜和超越委员会。该委员会的任务是研究太空中紫外线光红外天文学的可能任务和计划。
In 1996, the 18-member committee releaseda report正式建议NASA开发红外光线望远镜（该哈勃在2005年的原始终止之外运行）。
Following the report, three teams consisting of private and public sector scientists and engineers met to determine whether NASA could realize the committee’s vision. All three concluded that the proposed telescope would work, so in 1997 NASA agreed to fund additional studies on the technical and financial requirements for building the telescope.
2000s—3, 2, 1…delay
到2002年，美国宇航局已经选择了团队来建造工具和一组天文学家，以为望远镜提供建筑指导。望远镜还收到了詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜的正式名称NASA administratorwho led development of the Apollo program in the 1960s.
(In 2021, NASA considered renaming the telescope after apetitionsigned by more than 1,200 people requested a change in light of allegations that Webb was involved in persecuting gay and lesbian people during his career in government. After an investigation,NASA declined to rename the telescope）
Construction on JWST began in 2004. In 2005, an Ariane 5 rocket was chosen as the launch vehicle, and the European Space Agency’s Centre Spatial Guyanais spaceport in French Guiana was chosen as the launch site.
Despite this initial progress, JWST development soon slowed down immensely due to technical and management challenges, contractor performance issues, and low levels of cost reserve. As a result, NASA moved the original launch date of 2007 to the early 2010s and increased the project’s cost estimate considerably—from $500 million estimated in 1996, to $1–3.5 billion estimated in 2002, to $5 billion estimated in 2008.
那时，国会开始仔细研究该项目的管理方式。
国会审查JWST项目管理
As outlined in aSpace Newsarticle, Congress first strongly confronted NASA about JWST’s swelling costs and delays during the fiscal year 2012 budget cycle deliberations.
In July 2011, appropriators in the Republican-controlled House passed a spending bill that would have canceled the JWST project. In the Senate, where Democrats had a majority, appropriators insisted on funding the project fully.
JWST最终获得了资助，但该项目经历了广泛的重建，涉及设定2018年的新发布日期，并将成本限制为80亿美元。但是，NASA也不符合这些新目标。
In September 2017, NASAannouncedit would delay launch until spring 2019. Then in March 2018,it pushed the launchuntil spring 2020 and raised the cost estimate to $8.8 billion, with an extra $837 million requested for operating the telescope once it was in space. Finally, in June 2018,NASA moved the launch date到2021年3月。
In July 2018, the House Science Committee held atwo-day hearing调查最近导致JWST违反其法定上限开发成本的延误。然后，众议院科学委员会主席拉马尔·史密斯（Lamar Smith）（R-TX）通过谴责NASA对该项目的处理来开幕。
“It is truly staggering to behold how this space telescope’s cost and schedule projections went from costing the same as a space shuttle mission—around half a billion dollars with an original launch date in 2007—to now becoming an expenditure exceeding $9 billion with a new launch goal in March 2021. This is 19 times the original cost and a delay of 14 years. It doesn’t get much worse than that,” he said.
During the hearing, congresspeople heavily debated Northrop Grumman’s role in the delays. Since 2002, when Northrop Grumman acquired TRW Inc., the corporation that helped design JWST, Northrop Grumman became the prime constructor of JWST.
While errors are expected for a project as complex as JWST, independent reviews determined that the errors made under Northrop Grumman’s watch were avoidable.
“工人使用错误的溶剂来清洁天文台的推进阀。接线误差严重损坏了航天器的压力传感器。在重要的测试中，旨在将太阳盾牌放在一起的紧固件散落着数十个螺栓，这些螺栓花了几个月的时间才能找到。仅这些错误就导致时间表延迟约1.5年，6亿美元，”article上The Atlanticexplains.
When congresspeople tried to hold Northrop Grumman accountable during the hearing, the company skirted answering if it should be responsible for covering the cost overruns, as detailed in an FYIarticle.
Instead, the focus became how NASA could improve the structure of its contracts and the bidding process. For example, retired aerospace executive Tom Young suggested that instead of NASA entertaining bids offering a “lowest credible cost,” NASA should establish a “most probable cost” before inviting bids and set criteria for awarding contracts to attract bids that emphasize good performance.
Two years after the House hearing, NASAannounced another delay2020年7月，由于1921年10月10日大流行，将发布日期推向2021年10月。2021年9月，发布会是delayed slightly more到十二月。最终，在2021年12月25日，JWST启动了太空 - 最初构想的30年以上，耗资100亿美元。
(NASA alsoreturned the Hubble Space Telescope to full science operationsin December 2021. This telescope, which JWST was meant to replace, has been operating now for more than 31 years.)
Visit news9live.com fora more detailed timelineof JWST project development.
The future of and after JWST
Now that JWST is launched and what appears to besuccessfully deployed， 接下来发生什么？一个Inversearticle在接下来的几个月中，做得很好。
First, NASA needs to finish making some final adjustments to JWST’s mirrors. Once that is done, NASA will direct JWST to fly directly to Lagrangian point 2, a spot 1 million miles away where Earth and the sun’s gravity cancel out, allowing the telescope to orbit the sun with Earth permanently at its back. After reaching this point and following final alignment, JWST can start collecting data no sooner than mid-summer 2022.
As for future projects, a big concern for Congress is avoiding the effects that JWST’s delays and cost overruns had on other projects in NASA’s portfolio, such as theLaser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA)and theWide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).
To avoid future flagship missions crowding out funding for other important projects,the National Academies’ latest astronomy and astrophysics decadal surveysuggests implementing a new “Great Observatories Mission and Technologies Maturation Program.”
“The survey explains that flagship missions routinely have development timescales stretching multiple decades and that immaturity of their component technologies has in the past led to costly difficulties. ‘By investing more in the maturation process, NASA could develop missions to a level where there is significantly more confidence in the costs and requisite cost profiles before seeking congressional approval for the final implementation,’ it states,” an FYIarticleexplains.