“It made us go back months, about 10 months, that’s the only thing,” Mr. Robinson. The release date has been postponed to March 2021 and the price has increased by another $ 800 million.
The accident seemed a re Previous problems encountered by Webb. project. When the Webb Telescope was named in 2002, it had an estimated budget of $ 1 billion to $ 3.5 billion for a launch in early 2010. When it arrived in 2010, the launch date was moved to 2014 and the estimated costs of the telescope amounted to $ 5.1 billion. . After reviews found that both the budget and schedule were unrealistic, in 2011 NASA reinstated the program with a much higher budget of only $ 8 billion and a release date in October 2018.
For several years after the 2011 reset, the software appeared to be in good condition. “They were cutting milestones,” Mr. Robinson. “Very good table margin.”
But he added: “Things happen there that you don’t see. Ghosts always catch you, right?
For the screws that came off during the vibration tests, it turned out that the engineering drawings did not specify how much torque needed to be applied. This was left to the contractor, Northrop Grumman, to decide, and was not adjusted enough.
“You have to have specifications to make sure they are correct,” Mr. Robinson.
The review board published its report, pointed out a number of issues and made 32 recommendations. Mr. Robinson said NASA followed them all.
One recommendation was to conduct an audit of the entire spacecraft to identify “embedded problems,” errors that went unnoticed.