nasa is conducting an internal review of the space launch system rockets affordability
concerned by the program's outsized costs the nasa transition team appointed by president
joe biden initiated the study the analysis is being led by paul mcconaughey a former
deputy center director of nasa's marshall space flight center in huntsville as well
as its chief engineer the sls rocket program has been managed by marshall for more than a decade
critics have derided it as a jobs program intended to retain employees at key centers
such as alabama-based marshall as well as those at primary contractors such as boeing northrop
grumman and aerojet rocketdyne such criticism has been bolstered by frequent scheduled delays
the sls was originally due to launch in 2016 and the rocket will now launch no sooner than 2022 as
well as cost overruns for now costs seem to be the driving factor behind the white house's concerns
with a maximum cadence of one launch per year the sls rocket is expected to cost more than
two billion dollars per flight and that is on top of the 20 billion dollar nasa has already spent
developing the vehicle and its ground systems some of the incoming officials do not believe
the artemis moon program is sustainable with such launch costs mcconaughey is leading the
study for kathy litters nasa's chief of human spaceflight even before the study's initiation
mcconaughey had been pushing for the sls program to become more cost effective
one goal of this analysis is to find ways for the large nasa rocket to compete
effectively with privately developed rockets as part of the agency's artemis moon program
for example although spacex's falcon heavy rocket does not have as much lift capacity as the sls
rocket it has the advantage of being already in use and costing about one tenth as much per flight
blue origin and united launch alliance are also developing heavy lift rockets that are
intended to deliver components of a human landing system to lunar orbit perhaps most significantly
spacex is continuing a flight test campaign of its starship launch system
which may make its first orbital flight in the next 12 months this is a launch vehicle that could
potentially outlive the sls rocket be reusable and cost a fraction of the price if spacex succeeds in
getting starship into orbit there would be little technical justification for continuing government
subsidization of the less capable sls booster which is expendable and costs much much more
proponents of the sls rocket are not blind to this some believe spacex will not succeed with
its starship program and indeed myriad technical challenges remain others think nasa could find
ways of making the sls rocket more competitive and that is one point of this study another reason for
the new analysis however is to assess whether nasa really needs the sls rocket at all as part of the
artemis program already companies are planning to deliver the lunar lander to the moon with private
rockets the main job left for the sls rocket is launching orion with a crew to the moon launching
orion may also be doable with private rockets or the crew could simply launch on spacex's starship
obviating the need for orion itself although the biden administration has committed to continuing
the artemis program started under president donald trump it has other priorities for the space agency
particularly ramping up earth science activities to better understand climate change
if the office of management and budget no longer needs to spend three billion dollars annually to
develop the sls rocket and its ground systems the white house will at least look at the possibility
one initial step may involve slowing or ending work on an upgrade for the sls rocket
sources indicated after nasa completes the first iteration of the space launch system rocket
the plan is to upgrade it to block 1b the main part of which is an upgraded second stage
this piece of hardware is known as the exploration upper stage in the financial year 2021 budget
bill congress provided 400 million dollars for the development of this stage however some senior nasa
officials would like to at least pause work on this upper stage to them it is premature to work
on an upgraded rocket while the first version of the sls rocket is yet unproven especially if biden
space officials determine the sls rocket will only play a limited role in future exploration plans
one source said the biden white house may seek to fly sls only a handful of times halt work on
the exploration upper stage and plan the future of artemis around commercial launch vehicles
all of this remains in flux however and the us congress will have a big say in whatever
the future of nasa's deep space exploration programs holds now regarding the faa starship
environmental review i saw that the endangered species act consultation and the section 106
review have both been pushed to march 27th these were previously listed in the mid-march time frame
also ea completion is still set for march 28th so let's wait for one more week
the james webb space telescope's main mirror is fully aligned and performing even better than it
had been designed to do nasa officials revealed in a news conference held virtually on wednesday
march 16. the 21.3 foot wide mirror composed of 18 hexagonal segments had to travel to space folded
aligning it into one smooth reflecting surface was one of the main tasks that the web control
team has had to tackle since the giant telescopes launch on december 25th the alignment process
which involved fine-tuning the positions and inclinations of the 18 segments with nanometer
scale precision has now been completed officials said although that process is not yet complete
the 10 billion dollar james webb space telescope mission the most complex and most expensive such
observatory ever launched is already producing images that take the scientists breath away
the telescope's performance so far is everything that we dare to hope jane rigby webb operations
project scientist at the nasa goddard space flight center in maryland said in a news conference the
engineering images that we saw today are as sharp and as crisp as the images that hubble
space telescope can take but are at a wavelength of light that is totally invisible to hubble
so this is making the invisible universe snapping into very very sharp focus when the mirror
alignment process started in early january the ground team pointed the telescope at hd
84406 what the scientists described as a very boring star in our milky way galaxy
the star 100 times fainter than what can be seen with the naked eye
was chosen not for its scientific significance but purely for its brightness and location
at the beginning of the alignment process the telescope was delivering 18 individual images
of the star with each of the primary mirror segments acting as a telescope on its own
the image released on wednesday shows a bright shining amber colored star emanating streams of
light across the universe even more interesting than the star itself however is its background
revealing dozens of specks and dots each a distant galaxy that was previously out of reach
these distant galaxies make webb's first image a so-called deep field such photographs focusing on
small sections of the sky aim to capture the most distant objects in the universe
deep fields are a specialty of the hubble space telescope webb's predecessor webb however
is set to beat hubble in its ability to peer into the depths there's no way that webb can look for
two thousand seconds at any point in the sky and not get an incredibly deep field rigby said
this is going to be the future from now on wherever we look it's a deep field
without even really breaking a sweat we're seeing back in time to galaxies that we're
seeing the light as it looked billions of years ago randy kimball nasa's web project scientist for
integration test and commissioning told space.com in an earlier interview that where hubble requires
weeks to obtain some of its best deep field images web will accomplish the same results within hours
however the two observatories don't image the universe in the same wavelengths hubble is an
expert at visible and ultraviolet radiation and web sits firmly in the realm of the infrared
the web telescope was designed to be up to 100 times more sensitive than hubble and that goal
has not just been accomplished but exceeded nasa officials said in the briefing we said last fall
that we would know that the telescope is working properly and we have an image of a star that looks
like a star lee feinberg web optical telescope element manager at the nasa goddard space flight
center said in the briefing now you're seeing that image and i'm happy to say that the optical
performance of the telescope is absolutely phenomenal it is really working extremely well
the performance is as good if not better than our most optimistic prediction
no other telescope before has been launched to space with a foldable mirror to make the
mission possible the engineering teams at nasa and its partner organizations
had to develop completely new technologies that had never been flown in space before
as a result the james webb space telescope project faced many delays and cost overruns
the work however has paid off as the telescope has sailed through all of its major commissioning
milestones without the smallest hiccup of all the sleepless nights i've had in the
worries that i've had they are all behind us now thomas serbician nasa's associate administrator
for science said in a briefing it's not because there's no path ahead
there's still a mountain to climb those important tasks that need to be done but we are way up that
mountain in early january the telescope deployed its sun shield in a similarly smooth process
the control teams will now focus on the telescopes for science instruments first scientific images
are expected to be released in june or july nasa is keeping the celestial object that will become
the first target of web scientific exploration secret until then the mirror alignment was
accomplished with the help of the near infrared camera one of webs for scientific instruments
the remaining three are still waiting to open their eyes in addition to aligning the mirror
the scientists had to wait for the instruments to cool down to extremely cold temperatures
close to absolute zero since webb is an infrared telescope and infrared light is essentially heat
any warmth emitted by the telescope and its instruments would dazzle the detectors and make
it impossible for them to see the most distant objects in the universe with all its gear deployed
aligned and cooled down webb will be able to see the first stars that sprung up in the nascent
universe only a few hundred million years after the big bang and that wraps up today's episode
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