The launch of the James Webb space telescope, the successor to the Hubble, has been postponed again. But, NASA reports, the telescope will now go into space on Christmas Day at the earliest.
Bad weather conditions at the launch site in French Guiana make it too risky to launch on Friday.
This is the second postponement in a short time. Initially, the launch was supposed to occur on Wednesday, but it was moved to Friday due to technical problems. The launch team will look at the new weather forecasts on Thursday evening. If those are again unfavourable, James Webb’s launch could be rescheduled again.
The launch of James Webb has been a long time coming. The telescope has been in development since 1996 and should have been launched in 2007. However, the project was postponed almost annually. This was partly due to human errors during construction and because testing took longer than expected.
James Webb is to be the successor to the famous Hubble Space Telescope. The new telescope is more prominent and sharper and should therefore be able to see things that Hubble has never discovered. For example, James Webb will search for planets where life is possible and for traces of the Big Bang. The device costs about 8 billion euros and is about the size of a tennis court.