Washington (AFP)
NASA announced on Thursday that the launch of the large James Webb space telescope at 10 billion dollars by an Ariane 5 rocket would be postponed again, to October 31, 2021 instead of March, because of the pandemic and other development problems .
The telescope, imagined in the 1990s, was initially to be launched in the 2000s, but countless development problems, at the main manufacturer Northrop Grumman, led to multiple postponements and a doubling of the cost.
"Webb is the most complex space observatory in the world and our highest scientific priority, we have worked hard to keep moving forward during the pandemic," said NASA scientific director Thomas Zurbuchen.
During the previous report, in June 2018, many Nasa officials repeated that "Webb is worth the wait".
The telescope, once its solar shield unfolded, will be as large as "a tennis court", and its main mirror will measure 6.5 meters in diameter, immense in order to "detect the faint glow of distant stars and galaxies", and three times more sensitive than Hubble, launched in 1990.
Launched from Kourou in French Guiana, it will be placed in orbit around the Sun, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Its total cost was estimated by NASA in 2018 at 9.66 billion dollars, against 4.5 billion in 2007.
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