NOC Northrop Grumman Corp Holding Co

By Andy Pasztor 

Launch of NASA's troubled James Webb space telescope will be delayed another year to March 2021 and development costs will climb 10% above revised targets announced just three months ago, creating further congressional turmoil for the agency's top astronomy project.

The further slips and an estimated price tag of $8.8 billion were announced Wednesday, including projections that mistakes by production employees of prime contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. will amount to a $600 million hit to the program. The findings were included in the report of an independent review board previously set up by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to study the project and recommend a way forward.

The review reiterated that a series of design, production and quality-control lapses caused the latest difficulties, many of which could have been avoided or solved by "simple fixes that were not implemented," according to Thomas Young, a retired NASA and industry official who headed the outside panel. But despite nagging problems that reappeared years after lawmakers added funding for the high-profile project and NASA managers significantly pushed back the anticipated launch date at least twice before, Mr. Young told reporters his group unanimously agreed the ambitious space telescope should be completed in light of "the compelling science" it promised.

In his remarks Wednesday, Mr. Young said that as recently as March, when NASA delayed the projected launch date to May 2020 from June 2019, "too much optimism had been built into the schedule." He also told reporters "I don't think anybody can tell us today" whether further problems will crop up to prompt additional delays.

Originally slated to be launched in 2007, the space telescope is intended to travel farther into space that any previous observatory to try to study origins of stars and potentially identify other planets capable of supporting life.

Mr. Young said he had 80% confidence that the latest schedule and cost estimates will be met. For James Webb to continue, lawmakers will have to approve the new cost ceiling, which exceeds a firm congressionally imposed cap of $8 billion in place since 2011.

Before the press conference, a NASA public affairs official said James Bridenstine, the agency's chief, had sent a message to employees expressing his "unwavering support" for the space telescope.

Northrop Grumman, which previously revamped its production procedures and agreed to strict new government oversight requirements, has been criticized because workers installed 16 valves on the satellite's thrusters without relying on detailed instructions and in the process used the wrong cleaning compound.

Resulting leaks required a subcontractor to refurbish the valves, followed by another time-consuming process to replace and retest them. It took about three months to complete the process, one person familiar with the details said.

When workers deployed a sun shield designed to protect the spacecraft's intricate gold, hexagonal-shaped mirrors in space, the operation took twice as long as expected and revealed shortcomings despite earlier successful tests with a one-third-scale replica.

Cables that pull the shield into shape "develop too much slack during the deployment, creating a snagging hazard," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for unmanned missions, said earlier this year.

Several tears also appeared in the shield, because of unexpected stresses stemming from workers' incorrectly attaching hooks and cables to the wrong holes. Several of those fasteners still haven't been retrieved, NASA officials said Wednesday.

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

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 27, 2018 15:31 ET (19:31 GMT)

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