"The James Webb space telescope team is working on a communication problem between the observatory and the launch system," Nasa, the US space agency, announced on Tuesday night in a brief statement.
Result: a further postponement of the launch of Hubble's big brother, which will be from Kourou (Guyana), aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.
First announced in October, then on December 18 and again postponed to December 22, the take-off of Hubble's big brother will now be on December 24 at the earliest, warns NASA.
A launch with heavy stakes
Better to take all precautions as this James Webb program is at stake, and sending it a perilous mission.
The James Webb is the largest and most powerful space telescope ever to be sent to space.
Equipped with a primary mirror 6.5 meters in diameter and composed of 18 hexagonal segments covered with a thin film of gold, as well as a sun visor as large as a tennis court, it will enter folded into Ariane 5.
Once in space, it will have to reach point Lagrange L2, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, where it will accompany our planet in orbit around the Sun.
Before that, once detached from the rocket, the James Webb will have to unfold all of its gear, an operation that alone will take three weeks.
With no margin of error possible for this telescope, which cost a total of 10 billion dollars and for which there is no replacement model planned.
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