WP spotlights the drama of Hubble’s envisioned successor
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0243
An illustration and a bit of text at the bottom of the 27 October Washington Post front page draw attention to the continuing drama of the James Webb Space Telescope and point readers to a half-page article and a quarter-page collection of illustrations on page 7. (The online Post home page shines no such spotlight; it buries the links on a subordinate page.)
The headlines summarize Brian Vastag’s general JWST update. Online, it’s “Budget fight rages over James Webb Space Telescope.” In print, it’s “Costs continue to magnify for new space telescope; Science community, Congress debate fate of NASA project.”
Vastag calls the Webb instrument, which is named for an early head of NASA , “astronomy’s big, generational gamble, designed to peer back to the dawn of time, spy the first stars and galaxies, and search for signs of life on distant exoplanets—all feats the Hubble Space Telescope can’t manage.” He explains that when unfolded and made operational at the L2 Lagrangian point between Earth and the Sun, it will be the size of a tennis court and will surpass Hubble in its ability to discern from the early universe not just “toddler pictures” but “baby pictures.”
The article details the funding politics, including the general problem of early-years lowballing of budget requests for large projects and the prospects for financial-tradeoff harm from JWST to other NASA programs. Vastag writes:
At a time when NASA is searching for a post-shuttle identity, the agency has made the Webb a top priority. But on its way to the heavens, the Webb has run wildly over budget, drawn threats of cancellation from Congress, elbowed aside other NASA science missions and driven a wedge through the space science community.
Its fate for now rests on negotiations between NASA’s chief purse holders in Congress, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) and Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.). Mikulski, the telescope’s staunchest champion, chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee in charge of NASA’s budget; Wolf holds the parallel position in the House.
Maybe notably, Vastag quotes Wolf: “I think the Senate and I will be able to work it out.”
At the end Vastag observes that JWST is “the only mission in town for astronomers. They’ve cast their lot with a huge, flagship mission.” He quotes Jonathan Gardner, NASA’s deputy project scientist for the Webb: “Cancellation means the Hubble has no successor. That would essentially be the end of space astrophysics. It would be the end of doing this kind of astronomy.”
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are collected each Friday for ‘Science and the media.’ He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.