NOC Northrop Grumman Corp Holding Co

By Andy Pasztor 

NASA on Tuesday announced a roughly one-year launch delay for the James Webb Space Telescope, blaming some of the setbacks plaguing its premier space-science program on "avoidable errors" by prime contractor Northrop Grumman Corp.

The multibillion-dollar project, beset by busted schedules and major cost overruns stretching back to the start of the decade, now is slated to blast off around May 2020 rather than the previously announced June 2019. During a media briefing Tuesday, top agency officials attributed part of problem to factory slipups such as valves damaged by an improper solvent or a heater that was mistakenly overstressed and needed to be replaced.

To prevent further delays, senior National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials on Tuesday laid out an unusually stringent oversight plan -- including personnel changes and mandated twice monthly updates by senior Northrop Grumman management to agency headquarters. The goal is to gain more insight and assert greater control regarding the company's work.

"We're reviewing technical processes and procedures at Northrop Grumman to assure mission success," Dennis Andrucyk, deputy associate administrator in NASA's science-mission division, told reporters.

His boss, Thomas Zurbuchen, who runs that part of the agency, said, "We have only one shot to get this right" before launch, because "we want this to work well in orbit."

The move also likely sets up a congressional debate over reauthorizing the trouble-plagued program, and ripples could impact the timing of an array of other astrophysics projects being planned in the U.S. and overseas. Many of those projects partly depend on data anticipated from the James Webb platform.

Before the briefing, a Northrop Grumman spokesman released a terse statement indicating the company "remains steadfast in its commitment to NASA and ensuring successful integration, launch and deployment." Afterward, the company declined to elaborate, and the spokesman didn't provide any additional response.

Even with a program in crisis, it is uncharacteristic for NASA to take such a public stance attributing some problems to design issues that initially weren't recognized by agency managers but also pinpointing elementary factory-floor errors.

NASA officials, for instance, said they grossly underestimated the time needed to test some critical components. But Mr. Zurbuchen also told reporters the agency intends to learn lessons from the James Webb program to "actually develop the technologies before we start a mission."

Outgoing NASA chief Robert Lightfoot said the agency has spent some $7.3 billion so far, and all the hardware has been manufactured, but integration of the spacecraft's parts and essential checks need to be completed. "It's just a matter of putting the two halves together and getting the testing done," he said.

The moves are expected to boost the program's cost above the combined $8.8 billion limit for development and operations previously established by lawmakers, but NASA officials declined to elaborate. They said details will be provided to lawmakers this summer, after additional internal and outside reviews.

The high-profile program is the largest international scientific effort in U.S. history that doesn't involve astronauts, and it is the most advanced space telescope ever developed. Northrop Grumman is responsible for building the portion that powers and protects the complex systems able to capture infrared signals.

Tuesday's developments follow a U.S. Government Accountability Office report last month projecting likely schedule and cost slippage. That study concluded, among other things, that NASA had a history of overstating workforce reductions; that management decisions had eroded much of the program's funding cushions; and that the agency still confronted stiff technical challenges. At the time, the GAO also said certain "work continues to take longer than planned."

GAO auditors found that project managers had "used all remaining schedule reserve -- or extra time set aside in the schedule in the event of delays or unforeseen risks -- to address technical issues," including problems detected during vibration testing.

Initially, the project carried a price tag of around $1.6 billion and was supposed to begin operation in 2011

Last year, NASA pushed scheduled blastoff of the massive telescope from October 2018 to a launch window between March and June 2019, primarily as a result of delays integrating components.

Months before, NASA administrator Charles Bolden told reporters the space telescope was "an incredibly difficult program to manage." He said "it almost didn't happen" due to a cascade of previous problems.

Just two weeks ago, NASA issued an upbeat statement indicating work was progressing well and that the agency had experienced "great success" in demonstrating readiness for launch.

But during a NASA advisory committee meeting last week, the agency telegraphed further delays were anticipated in the wake of an independent schedule review.

On Tuesday, NASA disclosed its revised schedule incorporates a three-month cushion to deal with more unexpected technical glitches or potentially new testing challenges. Looking ahead, Mr. Lightfoot said agency leaders "want to make sure what's going on pretty much on a daily basis" considering the project's complexity and importance.

As part of the fiscal 2018 omnibus spending bill that lawmakers passed last week, the program received the full $533.7 million requested by the White House. But as in past spending packages, Congress directed NASA to notify it of any cost increase.

Slated for launch by a European Ariane rocket, the telescope is the most sophisticated -- and expensive -- space observatory ever conceived, featuring a 21.3-foot-wide primary mirror made up of 18 adjustable gold-coated segments. The design, much larger than its predecessor Hubble Space Telescope, is intended to capture infrared light behind a complex sunshade that unfurls to the size of a tennis court. NASA aims to use the next-generation platform to find new planets and cosmic structures and to better understand formation of distant stars, galaxies and the universe itself.

Unlike Hubble, which operated in orbit relatively close to the earth and was able to be repeatedly repaired and serviced by astronauts, the James Webb telescope is bound for a location some one million miles away. It won't be accessible to any astronauts, which accounts for the extensive testing regime. Its mirrors have to be precisely polished and formed so they will achieve and maintain the correct shape in the frigid space environment.

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 27, 2018 16:04 ET (20:04 GMT)

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