The James Webb Space Telescope is a $10-billion gamble

No earlier than Dec. 24, if all goes well, an Ariane 5 rocket will blast off from French Guiana carrying the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. If the JWST successfully deploys a month later at the Earth-Sun L2 point, it will revolutionize space-based astronomy and enhance humanity’s understanding of the universe. However, if something goes wrong, the latest space telescope could become a $10 billion write-off.

The James Webb Space Telescope has been in development since 1996. Originally, the telescope was estimated to cost $500 million. However, the project soon become a fiscal black hole as constant redesigns and technical problems increased the telescope’s cost to just shy of $10 billion. At one time, the JWST came close to cancellation by the United States Congress.

However, NASA and its international partners persevered. Soon, the JWST will launch into space and will begin a month-long journey that will take it almost 1 million miles from Earth, where it will be fully deployed. Success will mean a new era of discovering the secrets of the universe. Failure will spark a political scandal that may rock NASA to its foundations.

Big Think relates the five steps that the JWST must take before it becomes a successful space telescope. It must launch. The solar array must deploy. The sun shield that keeps the space telescope cool must deploy. The two mirrors must deploy. The JWST must arrive in a HALO orbit at the Earth-Sun L2 point almost 1 million miles away. If any of these steps fail, the James Webb Space Telescope becomes the most expensive space junk in history.

The repercussions for NASA for such a failure would be catastrophic. Congress will demand answers and likely some heads on pikes, metaphorically speaking. A special commission, such as the one created after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of 1986, would likely be formed. In the meantime, senators and congressmen would savage the space agency to raise their political standing. NASA officials would be dragged before congressional committees to make an accounting. The media would have a stereotypical field day.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who as a United States senator could be found on the other side of such hearings, would have to be ready for hours of unpleasantness. NASA’s ability to manage large-scale projects, such as the Artemis program to return to the moon, would be called into question. 

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) underwent an embarrassing failure when, soon after it was deployed, a flaw in its main mirror was discovered. Fortunately, astronauts were able to fly to the HST in a space shuttle to fix the flaw and, on subsequent flights, make upgrades. Such a mission to the James Webb Space Telescope would be impractical, owing to its great distance from Earth.

Success, though, would be just as wonderful as failure would be horrible. The James Webb Space Telescope, with its ability to see in near infrared light, will be able to return images of stars and galaxies being formed billions of years ago, in the wake of the Big Bang. Scientists will be better able to understand how the universe began and started to form. The amount of knowledge thus won would be beyond evaluation.

Even more exciting, the JWST, will be able to search for signs of life on worlds orbiting other stars. Thousands of what are called exo-planets have been discovered in recent years. Some of them are in what scientists call the “Goldilocks Zone” — not so close to their star as to be too hot and not so far away as to be too cold.

According to Phys.org, the James Webb Space Telescope could ascertain if certain gasses exist in the atmospheres of some of these planets that might indicate life. If a world’s atmosphere contains water, methane and/or carbon monoxide, that world might be the abode of extraterrestrial life.

Such findings would not be definitive proof that life exists on other worlds, but they would constitute enough evidence to narrow the search when even more powerful instruments become available.

The prospect of the James Webb Space Telescope discovering a treasure horde of knowledge is more than worth the risk of an embarrassing failure. Success would mean that humanity would gain a better understanding of the universe of which we are but a tiny part.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.