On December 11, 2021, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is lowered toward its Ariane 5 rocket at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. The image is from the ESA-M.Pedoussaut.
There is an update for 6 p.m. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science missions, announced on Thursday afternoon that the data cable connection issue that was responsible for the delay has been fixed. He said that NASA is expected to give another update on Friday.
The European Space Agency and NASA said in a meeting on Thursday that a faulty data cable caused the latest delay in the launch of the big observatory.
The rocket that will send the James Webb Space Telescope into space will be provided by the European Space Agency. The Ariane 5 rocket is one of the most reliable.
Engineers working on the grand telescope for its upcoming liftoff from Europe's Spaceport found that a cable relaying data between the telescope and a "launch table" wasn't functioning properly. The launch was pushed back from December 22 to December 24 because of that discovery.
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Daniel Neuenschwander, the director of space transportation for the European Space Agency, said in the briefing that the interface issue was in the electrical network connecting the observatory and ground support equipment. There is a cable located in the launch table that is experiencing intermittent losses of data.
Neuenschwander said that the teams from NASA and the European Space Agency are still investigating the issue and will release more information later on Thursday.
During liftoff and early ascent through the atmosphere, the Ariane 5's fairing will protect it from the elements, but it hasn't yet been sealed. The cable issue was discovered during the so-called "aliveness test" that was intended to confirm the health of the spacecraft before it is put into the rocket.
The aliveness test was delayed because of the interface issue. The test was on the critical path for several hours. We have a meeting tonight. We will look at whether or not we managed to do the aliveness test and go forward with the encapsulation.
The teams are not taking any chances with the $10 billion observatory, which took 30 years to design and build, and is already many years delayed and a few billion dollars over budget.
Zurbuchen said that this was always going to be a special launch. "We have had four launches at NASA where we had multiple communication losses like this and we went forward with the launch." We were taking more risks. This is already risky enough so we are not taking any risks. We are making sure that everything works.
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