spacetoday.net: GAO warns of more JWST delays

Posted: Sat, Mar 3, 2018, 2:08 PM ET (1908 GMT)
James Webb Space Telescope (NASA)

A GAO report warns that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope likely faces additional delays and could bust its $8 billion cost cap. The GAO, in a report released Wednesday, found that the program has only a month and a half of schedule reserve even after a launch slip last year from October 2018 to the spring of 2019. This makes it likely that the launch will be delayed again beyond June 2019. Issues with the observatory's spacecraft and sunshield have contributed to the latest delays. The GAO said that those additional delays, and the additional personnel prime contractor Northrop Grumman has assigned to the program, could cause the mission's development cost to exceed a cap of $8 billion set by Congress in 2011.