[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE NEXT GREAT OBSERVATORY:
ASSESSING THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2011
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Serial No. 112-55
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. RALPH M. HALL, Texas, Chair
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
Wisconsin JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California ZOE LOFGREN, California
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas MARCIA L. FUDGE, Ohio
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas BEN R. LUJAN, New Mexico
PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia PAUL D. TONKO, New York
SANDY ADAMS, Florida JERRY McNERNEY, California
BENJAMIN QUAYLE, Arizona JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland
CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN, TERRI A. SEWELL, Alabama
Tennessee FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida
E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia HANSEN CLARKE, Michigan
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi
MO BROOKS, Alabama
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois
CHIP CRAVAACK, Minnesota
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana
DAN BENISHEK, Michigan
VACANCY
C O N T E N T S
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Ralph M. Hall, Chairman, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 12
Written Statement............................................ 13
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking
Minority Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
U.S. House of Representatives.................................. 14
Written Statement............................................ 15
Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Acting
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................
Written Statement............................................ 16
Witnesses:
Mr. Rick Howard, Program Director, James Webb Space Telescope,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Oral Statement............................................... 17
Written Statement............................................ 19
Dr. Roger Blandford, Professor of Physics, Stanford University
and Former Chair, Committee for the Decadal Survey of Astronomy
and Astrophysics, National Research Council
Oral Statement............................................... 29
Written Statement............................................ 31
Dr. Garth Illingworth, Professor and Astronomer, UCO/Lick
Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz
Oral Statement............................................... 36
Written Statement............................................ 38
Mr. Jeffrey D. Grant, Sector Vice President and General Manager,
Space Systems Division, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
Oral Statement............................................... 51
Written Statement............................................ 53
Discussion....................................................... 58
Appendix 1: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Mr. Rick Howard, Program Director, James Webb Space Telescope,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.................. 82
Dr. Roger Blandford, Professor of Physics, Stanford University
and Former Chair, Committee for the Decadal Survey of Astronomy
and Astrophysics, National Research Council.................... 101
Dr. Garth Illingworth, Professor and Astronomer, UCO/Lick
Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz.............. 110
Mr. Jeffrey D. Grant, Sector Vice President and General Manager,
Space Systems Division, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems..... 127
Appendix 2: Additional Materials for the Record
Ten New Technologies Developed by and for JWST................... 137
THE NEXT GREAT OBSERVATORY:
ASSESSING THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2011
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:05 p.m., in Room
2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ralph Hall
[Chairman of the Committee] presiding.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
hearing charter
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
The Next Great Observatory:
Assessing the James Webb Space Telescope
tuesday, december 6, 2011
2:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m.
2318 rayburn house office building
Introduction
In 2001, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was ranked as the
highest priority large space mission in astronomy by the National
Academies of Science in their decadal survey Astronomy and Astrophysics
in the New Millennium. Originally estimated by the decadal committee to
cost $1 billion and to be launched in 2007, JWST was dubbed as the next
Great Observatory that will be three times more powerful than the
Hubble Space Telescope in the infrared and eight times more powerful
than the Spitzer Space Telescope.
However, after high-level scrutiny arising from years of program
cost and schedule overruns, NASA recently developed a revised plan for
JWST that--if fully funded--would enable completion and launch by
October 2018. The revised budget life cycle costs now total just over
$8.8 billion.
The purpose of the hearing will be to receive testimony from NASA,
academic, and industry stakeholders on the progress and remaining
challenges associated with completing JWST by the target launch date of
October 2018, and at a cost no greater than $8.85 billion.
Witnesses
Mr. Rick Howard, Program Director, James Webb Space
Telescope, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Dr. Roger Blandford, Professor of Physics, Stanford
University and Former Chair, Committee for the Decadal Survey of
Astronomy and Astrophysics, National Research Council
Dr. Garth Illingworth, Professor & Astronomer, UCO/Lick
Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz
Mr. Jeffrey D. Grant, Sector Vice President & General
Manager, Space Systems Division, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
Overarching Questions
What confidence should Congress have in the new cost and
schedule estimates for JWST?
What are the chief technical and programmatic challenges
facing JWST? Does the re-plan address systemic issues with the program
and put it on a path for success?
What attributes of JWST merited its selection as the top-
priority large-scale mission in the decadal survey Astronomy and
Astrophysics in the New Millennium released in 2001? Are those reasons
still valid today? Does the fact that JWST has not been completed as
envisioned in the previous decade affect the recommendations in the
most recent decadal survey, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and
Astrophysics, released in 2010?
Background
Previously known as the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), the
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was planned as the follow-on space
telescope, building on the successes of the Hubble Space Telescope. The
main technical features of JWST include a 6.5 meter diameter mirror
optimized for observations in the infrared using four specialized
scientific instruments (detailed below). JWST is set to orbit nearly
one million miles from Earth in the Earth-Sun Lagrange (L2) point.
These features are expected to produce unparalleled scientific
discovery, glimpsing back to the origins of the galaxies, and providing
insights into the early formation of stars and planets.
Program Timeline
June 1997--The Next Generation Space Telescope: Visiting
a Time When Galaxies Were Young report utilized initial feasibility
studies to present a technological roadmap for the development of the
next generation space telescope (NGST) in the next decade at a cost of
$500 million and launch date of 2007.
2001--Telescope identified by NAS as top-priority in
Decadal Survey, Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium;
estimated cost is $1 billion.
Summer 2002--Mission Definition Review completed and
project moved out of Phase A (feasibility studies) into Phase B
(definition studies); the cost was estimated to be $2.5 billion with a
launch date of 2010; Northrop Grumman was awarded prime contractor.
March 2005--NASA identified further cost growth,
increasing life-cycle cost estimate to $4.5 billion and a schedule slip
of two years.
April 2006--Independent review teams concluded that
JWST's scientific performance and technical content were sound, with
concern centered on the program's early year funding constraints.
July 2008--Program confirmation review placed the
baseline life-cycle cost at $5 billion with a launch date of June 2014.
June 2010--Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Chairwoman of
the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science,
and Related Agencies, requests an independent review of the program;
NASA commissioned an Independent Comprehensive Review Panel (ICRP) led
by John Casani, Special Assistant to the Director at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory.
October 2010--ICRP report delivered to NASA and to
Congress; NASA notified Congress of increase to cost baseline of over
15 percent and delay to schedule baseline of over six months,
triggering a ``Breach Report'' (more below).
September 2011--JWST re-plan approved with new baseline
of $8.8 billion total life-cycle cost with launch readiness date of
October 2018.
Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Surveys
The 2001 Decadal Survey, Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New
Millennium, identified the then-called Next Generation Space Telescope
(NGST) as the top-priority for large-scale missions for the decade
2001-2010. Although the Hubble Space Telescope continues to provide
excellent science, the NGST would be far more sensitive and be able to
see light in the infrared that Hubble could not. Pursuing NGST was the
next logical step in advancing scientific discovery and was believed to
have sufficient technology readiness to make the telescope affordable.
The decadal survey estimated NGST would cost $1 billion and be ready
for launch in 2008.
Despite changes to the program in the ensuing decade--including
revised cost and schedule baselines, as well as de-scoping the
segmented mirrors from an 8 meter to 6.5 meter diameter--JWST was
supposedly still on track (based on the revised cost and schedule) when
it was time again for the National Academies to conduct the next
decadal survey. Given assurances by NASA, the survey committee had
little evidence to believe otherwise. Yet, even as doubts emerged, the
committee presented its recommendations assuming JWST would be launched
no later than the middle of the decade. New Worlds, New Horizons in
Astronomy and Astrophysics (Astro2010) therefore moved forward under
the assumption that JWST would be completed as planned and recommended
pursuit of the next top-priority mission, the Wide-Field Infrared
Survey Telescope (WFIRST). WFIRST would conduct exoplanet and dark
energy research. It is now expected that WFIRST cannot begin
development until after JWST is launched.
Independent Comprehensive Review Panel (ICRP)
In a letter to NASA in June 2010, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD),
Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce,
Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, requested an independent review
of the JWST program citing concerns about continued growth in cost and
delay in schedule. The letter requested an independent panel review the
root causes of the cost growth and schedule delay, to assess NASA's
plans for completing development and testing of the telescope, to
review possible changes to the telescope and to provide a minimum cost
to launch. NASA subsequently commissioned an Independent Comprehensive
Review Panel (ICRP) led by John Casani, Special Assistant to the
Director at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A copy of the report can be
found here: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/
499224main-JWST-ICRP-Report-FINAL.pdf.
The ICRP report revealed poor budgeting and program management, not
technical performance, as the root cause for JWST's woes. At the
outset, it was determined that JWST did not have a proper budget
baseline and that budgeted reserves were insufficient. They found that
costs were managed on a year-to-year basis, which led to deferred work
and corresponding increases to life cycle costs. The cost of deferring
work further reduced reserves available in later years, resulting in a
project life cycle cost that continued to spiral out of control. The
ICRP, however, did not find the funds spent as wasted. Cutting-edge
hardware had been delivered and tests were underway.
Specifically, the ICRP provided NASA with 22 recommendations as to
how to get the program back on track and outlined what it thought to be
a new cost-to-launch budget profile for a launch in 2014. In summary,
the report states:
Based on the issues present in the current plans to complete,
the Panel has identified changes to address the root cause
issues discussed in the report, plus ones that could be
implemented to diminish the risk of future cost increases and
delays in the launch date. These are summarized below.
Move the JWST management and accountability from the
Astrophysics Division to a new organizational entity at HQ having
responsibility only for the management and execution of JWST.
Restructure the JWST Project Office at the Goddard Space
Flight Center (GSFC) to ensure that the Project is managed with a focus
on the Life Cycle Cost and Launch Readiness Date, as well as on meeting
science requirements appropriate to the Implementation Phase.
Assign management and execution responsibility for the
JWST Project to the GSFC Director, with accountability to the Science
Mission Directorate Associate Administrator at HQ.
Establish the Office of Independent Program and Cost
Evaluation (IPCE) as the recognized Agency estimating capability,
responsible for validating the most probable cost and schedule
estimates developed by projects and for developing Independent Cost
Estimates (ICE) for major milestone reviews.
Develop a new JWST baseline cost and schedule plan-to-
complete that incorporates adequate contingency and schedule reserve in
each year. Include a realistic allowance for all threats in the yearly
budget submission. Budget at 80% confidence, and require 25% reserves
in each year through launch. Commission a new ICE, reconcile the new
plan with it, and update the plan appropriately. \1\
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\1\ JWST-ICRP Final report, October 29, 2011, p. 9.
NASA agreed with all of the recommendations presented by the
ICRP and made several changes even before completing its re-
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plan of the program. According to NASA, they have now:
Elevated program visibility, reporting, performance
assessment and cost control;
Replaced all JWST senior management at both Goddard and
Headquarters;
Elevated JWST to a division level within Science Mission
Directorate that reports directly to the NASA Associate Administrator
on a weekly basis; and
Used ICRP cost and schedule estimates as one of the
inputs to develop the new baseline.
Summary of JWST Breach Report and Re-Plan
Pursuant to Section 103 of the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 (P.L.
109-155), NASA is required to provide Congress with a new cost and
schedule baseline for major programs that exceed costs by more than 15
percent or schedule by more than six months. NASA notified Congress on
October 28, 2010, that the agency anticipated JWST would breach both
its cost and schedule baselines and deferred its formal response until
it could conduct a complete assessment.
In response to the ICRP report and as part of the required report
to Congress, NASA delivered a Cost and Schedule Analysis Report for the
James Webb Space Telescope (Breach Report) to Congress on October 21,
2011, which estimates the full life-cycle cost of the mission to now be
$8.835 billion with a launch date of October 2018.
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According to NASA's report, the newly programmed JWST baseline:
Represents a high-confidence, realistic schedule with
adequate reserves that launches JWST as soon as possible.
Presents a funding profile that was adjusted to reduce
risk and provide adequate early year reserves.
Included a Joint Cost and Schedule Confidence Level (JCL)
analysis consistent with an 80% confidence level; and
Was reviewed by the JWST Standing Review Board (SRB)--
NASA's independent external review board--with findings and
recommendations factored into final plan.
As evident in Table 1 above, the new baseline will require
approximately $1.2 billion in additional funding in FY 12-FY 16 (above
the President's FY 12 request). NASA is proposing that funds be
redirected from within its budget so that half would come from the
Science Mission Directorate (with the exception of Earth Science) and
half from the Cross-Agency Support account. NASA and the Administration
continue to discuss the budget adjustments with the final determination
to be reflected in the budget request for fiscal year 2013. The fiscal
year 2012 budget as passed by Congress on November 17, 2011, reflects
the additional funds needed for JWST in FY 12 by providing $529.6
million.
Analysis of Alternatives
As part of the required Breach Report, NASA asked the Aerospace
Corporation to conduct an analysis of alternatives (AOA) to JWST to
ensure that all possible options were given proper consideration. As
summary, the AOA:
Reviewed four categories of observatories (airborne,
ground, space, and variants to the JWST baseline) and assorted
combinations thereof;
Measured performance of alternatives against JWST Level 1
science requirements; and
Distilled alternatives down to 12 potential options based
on ability to meet the mission science requirements and technical
feasibility to analyze in further detail.
The results of the analysis concluded that the JWST baseline
continues to be the best value. Specifically, the Aerospace Corporation
found that none of the alternatives provide the equivalent Level 1
science requirements at a lower cost or at an earlier full operational
capability date. Furthermore, while alternative designs might lower
costs in one area or another, the science that must be given up to
accommodate those designs rendered the alternative undesirable based on
the science requirements determined by the National Academies Decadal
Survey process. Furthermore, many of the 2011 decadal survey
recommendations are predicated on the groundwork that is to be laid by
JWST.
Program Design Elements and Status
Sunshield
A critical element of the telescope's design is a giant tennis-
court-sized sunshield that will block the mirrors and science
instruments from light from the sun, Moon, and Earth as well as prevent
radiation from the telescope's own heat-producing equipment. The
sunshield will consist of five layers--none touching the other--of a
heat-resistant material called silicon-coated Kapton. Each layer will
be no thicker than half of a human hair.
In order to ensure a successful sunshield design and deployment,
the sunshield has to undergo extensive testing. Currently a template
membrane has been constructed and tested to validate that its shape
holds under tension and to verify the folding/packing concept works on
a full-scale mockup. Additionally, a 1/3-size scale model was
constructed to test deployment and undergo thermal testing in a
cryogenic chamber. Construction on the final sunshield has not yet
started.
Mirrors
The purpose of the mirrors is to collect the light and channel it
to the instruments. Because JWST is designed to detect the faintest of
infrared light, billions of light years away, the mirrors must be
precisely engineered. JWST's primary mirror is made up of 18 individual
hexagonal segments that fold up inside the rocket; once deployed, the
mirrors will function as a single 6.5 meter (21.3 feet) diameter
mirror--the largest ever to be deployed in space. All 18 mirrors have
been manufactured, polished, and coated, and all but six have completed
testing and are ready for final assembly. The final six will be tested
at cryogenic temperatures with final adjustments made by the end of
this calendar year.
Scientific Instruments
The Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) contains four
science instruments and a guide camera. The ISIM and science
instruments are 90% complete and are undergoing integration at the
Goddard Spaceflight Center. The NIRSpec instrument was found to have
quality issues, which will delay its delivery. However, this delay is
captured in the new re-plan and should not affect overall schedule.
Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI)--provided by the European
Consortium with the European Space Agency (ESA) and by the NASA Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). MIRI has both a camera and a spectrograph
that sees light in the mid-infrared, allowing it to see newly forming
stars and faintly visible comets as well as objects in the Kuiper Belt.
MIRI's camera will provide wide-field, broadband imaging similar to
those the public has come to expect from Hubble. The spectrograph will
provide new physical details of the objects it will observe.
Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam)--provided by the University
of Arizona is Webb's primary imager, detecting light from the earlier
stars and galaxies. NIRCam is equipped with coronagraphs that will
allow astronomers to take pictures of very faint objects around a
central bright object, like solar systems. NIRCam's coronagraphs work
by blocking a brighter object's light, making it possible to view the
dimmer object nearby--just like shielding the sun from your eyes with
an upraised hand can allow you to focus on the view in front of you.
With the coronagraphs, astronomers hope to determine the
characteristics of planets orbiting nearby stars.
Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec)--provided by the
European Space Agency (ESA), with components provided by NASA/GSFC.
Used to disperse light from an object into a spectrum by which physical
properties such as temperature, mass, and chemical composition can be
determined.
Fine Guidance Sensor Tunable Filter Imager (FGS-TFI)--
provided by the Canadian Space Agency. The Fine Guidance Sensor allows
the telescope to point precisely, while the Tunable Filter will be able
to select and focus on extremely specific wavelengths of light. Most
cameras can only see a certain wavelength, but FGS-TFI will be able to
pick from a range. The FGS-TFI will be used to study just-forming
planetary systems and dust disks that could become planets, the
internal dynamics of galaxies, and the characteristics of elements and
molecules in clouds of stellar gas. \2\
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\2\ http://www.jwst.nasa.gov.
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Spacecraft Bus
The spacecraft bus houses the electronics, attitude and thermal
control, communications, and propulsion systems. These systems are
considered relatively ``standard'' given that all space telescopes and
satellites require similar systems. For this reason, design of the bus
only recently began final critical design review that is scheduled for
late 2014.
Assembly and Testing
A majority of the hardware for JWST has been constructed. However,
due to the nature of the telescope's orbit nearly one million miles
from Earth and the requirement that it operate in temperatures
approaching ^400 degrees Fahrenheit, NASA has no ``second chance'' to
make sure JWST performs as planned. The majority of the cost and time
remaining to complete JWST will be in assembly and testing. Along the
way, components must be tested to make sure they function individually,
as a group, and as the complete telescope. In addition, hardware such
as platforms and machinery must be specifically made to accommodate
construction of the huge telescope.
Goddard Space Flight Center is in charge of assembling each of the
science instruments into a larger unit, which will be subjected to both
temperature and vibration testing. The mirrors will be mounted to their
support structure and tested. The testing ensures that JWST can
withstand the stress of launch and the extreme conditions in space.
Johnson Space Center will then test the entire assembly in a large
120-foot-tall vacuum chamber originally used for the Apollo program.
The chamber is currently being modified to ensure testing at the proper
cryogenic temperatures and should be ready for use by summer 2012. Once
that test is complete, the sunshield and spacecraft bus will be added
to the package and tested yet again before being readied for launch.
\3\
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\3\ http://ngst.gsfc.nasa.gov/status.html.
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Recent FY 2012 Appropriation Activity
On July 7, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce,
Justice, Science, and Related Agencies reported an FY 2012
appropriations bill that provided zero funds for JWST. As stated in the
report:
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Independent Comprehensive
Review Panel revealed chronic and deeply rooted management
problems in the JWST project. These issues led to the project
cost being underestimated by as much as $1,400,000,000 relative
to the most recent baseline, and the budget could continue to
rise depending on the final launch date determination. Although
JWST is a particularly serious example, significant cost
overruns are commonplace at NASA, and the Committee believes
that the underlying causes will never be fully addressed if the
Congress does not establish clear consequences for failing to
meet budget and schedule expectations. The Committee
recommendation provides no funding for JWST in fiscal year
2012.
The Committee believes that this step will ultimately benefit
NASA by setting a cost discipline example for other projects
and by relieving the enormous pressure that JWST was placing on
NASA's ability to pursue other science missions.
On September 15, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on
Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies reported an FY 2012
appropriations bill providing a total of $530 million for JWST, a
number reflected in the NASA re-plan but not officially requested by
the Administration. Per the report:
The Committee strongly supports completion of the James Webb
Space Telescope [JWST]. JWST will be 100 times more powerful
than the Hubble Space Telescope and is poised to rewrite the
physics books. Last year, the Committee asked for an
independent assessment of JWST. That assessment, led by Dr.
John Casani, found that while JWST is technically sound, NASA
has never requested adequate resources to fund its development.
As with many other projects, budget optimism led to massive
ongoing cost overruns because the project did not have adequate
reserves or contingency to address the kinds of technical
problems that are expected to arise in a complex, cutting-edge
project. Without funds, the only other way to deal with
problems is to allow the schedule to slip. That slip, in turn,
makes the project cost even more, when accounting for the
technical costs as well as the cost of maintaining a pool of
highly skilled technical labor through the completion of the
project.
In response to the Casani report, NASA has submitted a new
baseline for JWST with an overall life cycle cost of
$8,700,000,000. NASA has assured the Committee that this new
baseline includes adequate reserves to achieve a 2018 launch
without further cost overruns. The Committee intends to hold
NASA and its contractors to that commitment, and the bill caps
the overall development cost for JWST at $8,000,000,000.
On November 17, the House and Senate agreed to final FY 12
appropriations for NASA as part of a ``mini-bus'' that included funding
for Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS), and Transportation-
Housing and Urban Development (T-HUD). The bill ultimately yielded to
the Senate version, providing JWST with the full amount needed as cited
in the re-plan. However, very specific language about how Congress
expects NASA to manage the program was included in the conference
report. It states:
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).--According to the recent
JWST budget replan, the program's lifecycle cost estimate is
now $8,835,000,000 (with formulation and development costs
totaling $8,000,000,000). This represents an increase of
$1,208,000,000 over the previous lifecycle cost estimate,
including an increase of $156,000,000 above the budget request
for fiscal year 2012. In order to accommodate that increase in
this agreement, the conferees received input from the
Administration and made reductions to the requested levels for
Earth and planetary science, astrophysics, and the agency's
budget for institutional management. Although the amounts
provided for these other science activities still constitute an
increase over the fiscal year 2011 levels, the conferees note
that keeping JWST on schedule from fiscal year 2013 through the
planned launch in fiscal year 2018 will require NASA to
identify another $1,052,000,000 over previous JWST estimates
while simultaneously working to meet the deficit reduction
requirements of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (P.L. 112-25).
As a result, outyear work throughout the agency may need to be
reconsidered. The conferees expect the administration to come
forward with a realistic long-term budget plan that conforms to
anticipated resources as part of its fiscal year 2013 budget
request.
To provide additional assurances that JWST's management and
funding problems are under control, the conference agreement
includes language strictly limiting JWST formulation and
development costs to the current estimate of $8,000,000,000 and
requiring any increase above that amount to be treated
according to procedures established for projects in 30 percent
breach of their lifecycle cost estimates.
In addition, the conferees direct the GAO to continually assess
the program and to report to the Committees on Appropriations
on key issues relating to program and risk management;
achievement of cost and schedule goals; and program technical
status. For its first report, the conferees direct the
Comptroller General to assess: (1) the risks and technological
challenges faced by JWST; (2) the adequacy of NASA's revised
JWST cost estimate based on GAO's cost assessment best
practices; and (3) the extent to which NASA has provided
adequate resources for and is performing oversight of the JWST
project to better ensure mission success. The first report
should be provided to the Committees no later than December 1,
2012, with reports continuing on an annual basis thereafter.
Periodic updates should also be provided to the Committees upon
request or whenever a significant new finding has been made.
NASA is directed to cooperate fully and to provide timely
access to analyses, data, applications, databases, portals,
reviews, milestone decision meetings, and contractor and agency
personnel.
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Chairman Hall. Okay. The Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology will come to order, and I say good afternoon to
everyone. We were scheduled for this morning. My script says--
if I stayed with the script, I would be telling you good
morning. Being of unsound mind, I don't read the script.
Welcome to today's hearing entitled ``The Next Great
Observatory: Assessing the James Webb Space Telescope.'' In
front of you are packets containing the written testimony, the
biographies, and the truth in testimony disclosures for today's
witnesses.
And we will be making opening statements, and I will
recognize myself for five minutes for an opening statement.
I would like to thank all the witnesses for taking time
from their very busy schedules to appear before our Committee
to discuss the James Webb Space Telescope, and I realize
considerable effort goes into the drafting and writing of the
statements, but they are very helpful to us. They are helpful
to these folks that aren't here that have conflicts, and they
are at other hearings right now, or they would be here, but
they get your copies. They have the copy of what you have
submitted to us, and we thank you for that.
I want you to know that your testimony, your wisdom, and
your experience is going to be invaluable to us because we have
you here because we think you probably know a lot more about
what we are doing than we do, and we realize you are giving up
valuable time to prepare for this, to travel here, and to grace
us with your presence. And your experience will be invaluable
to help our committee and our Congress as we deliberate in the
months ahead on related issues to NASA and its portfolio of
programs.
The James Webb Space Telescope has been identified by the
astrophysics community as its top priority program since 2001,
and just recently NASA itself named JWST as an agency priority.
The telescope would far surpass in science, power, and
capability any previous space-based observatory launch by NASA
and will enable the new observations into the deepest corners
of our universe, and I suspect it will be at least a generation
or two before a successor mission is even contemplated.
The potential new knowledge that will be returned is, in my
mind, difficult to imagine, while observatories are designed
and built to answer one set of questions. The record is replete
with discoveries that even the builders of telescopes never
contemplated.
But that is not why we are here this morning. Sadly, the
James Webb Space Telescope is another case study of NASA's
mismanagement of a flagship mission where original costs and
schedule estimates are grossly understated, project execution
is a litany of missed signals and deferred work, and senior
agency oversight is invoked only after the project files breach
reports. The resulting disruptions and breakage do tremendous
collateral damage to other agency programs and missions as
management just struggles to find the resources to return JWST
to a sound footing.
Not too many years ago, NASA's stakeholder community would
not be overly surprised with cost and schedule slippages. This
seems to be an accepted way of life that technically
challenging missions were expected to exceed original
estimates, but Congress' tolerance for these type of overruns
has run out.
I support the James Webb Space Telescope. The science
enabled by this mission will be extraordinary, but given
Congress and the White House's struggles to bring our federal
budget under control, there are members who have a tough time
continuing to vote for a program that requires another infusion
of over a billion dollars. Some of us argued that we should cut
our losses and move on. Others have suggested that we are
rewarding bad behavior by continuing to invest in the mission.
In my view, NASA's latest re-plan for the James Webb Telescope
is the agency's last opportunity to hold this program together.
I am anxious to hear from our witnesses about their
assessment of the steps taken by the agency to ensure high
confidence in the costs and the schedule estimates going
forward and in the project's new management structure. I am
also anxious to hear about the biggest challenges still
confronting the program.
Mr. Howard, don't take this personally, but I want the
record to note that NASA's testimony was provided to our
Committee late yesterday afternoon contrary to Committee rules
and past practice. By holding back testimony, Members and staff
were afforded only a handful of hours to review and analyze
Administration statements undermining the ability of the body
to engage in a well-informed dialogue with Executive Branch
witnesses. The White House's process for vetting testimony of
agency witnesses continues to frustrate this Committee and
frustrates Congress. This is not the first time testimony has
arrived only hours before the scheduled start of a hearing, and
I urge the White House to exercise greater diligence, and I
doubt seriously if they will listen to me.
My thanks, again, to the witnesses.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hall follows:]
Prepared Statement of Chairman Ralph M. Hall
Good afternoon. I'd like to thank our witnesses for taking time
from their busy schedules to appear before our Committee to discuss the
James Webb Space Telescope. I realize considerable effort goes into the
drafting and writing of statements, and I want you to know that your
testimony, wisdom, and experience will be of invaluable help to our
Committee and Congress as we deliberate in the months ahead on issues
related to NASA and its portfolio of programs.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been identified by the
astrophysics community as its top priority program since 2001, and just
recently NASA itself named JWST as an agency priority. The telescope
would far surpass in size, power, and capability any previous space-
based observatory launched by NASA and will enable new observations
into the deepest corners of our universe, and I suspect it will be at
least a generation or two before a successor mission is even
contemplated. The potential new knowledge that will be returned is, in
my mind, difficult to imagine. While observatories are designed and
built to answer one set of questions, the record is replete with
discoveries that even the builders of telescopes never contemplated.
But that's not why we are here this morning. Sadly, the James Webb
Space Telescope is another case study of NASA's mismanagement of a
flagship mission where original cost and schedule estimates are grossly
understated, project execution is a litany of missed signals and
deferred work, and senior agency oversight is invoked only after the
project files breach reports. The resulting disruptions and breakage do
tremendous collateral damage to other agency programs and missions as
management struggles to find the resources to return JWST to a sound
footing.
Not too many years ago, NASA's stakeholder community would not be
overly surprised with cost and schedule slippages. It seemed to be an
accepted way of life that technically challenging missions were
expected to exceed original estimates, but Congress' tolerance for
these types of overruns has run out.
I support the James Webb Space Telescope. The science enabled by
this mission will be extraordinary. But given Congress' and the White
House's struggles to bring our federal budget under control, there are
Members who will have a tough time continuing to vote for a program
that requires another infusion of over a billion dollars. Some have
argued that we should cut our losses and move on; others have suggested
that we're rewarding bad behavior by continuing to invest in the
mission.
In my view, NASA's latest re-plan for the James Webb Space
Telescope is the agency's last opportunity to hold this program
together. I am anxious to hear from our witnesses about their
assessment of the steps taken by the agency to ensure high confidence
in the cost and schedule estimates going forward, and in the project's
new management structure. I am also anxious to hear about the biggest
challenges still confronting the program.
Mr. Howard, don't take this personally, but I want the record to
note that NASA's testimony was provided to our Committee late yesterday
afternoon, contrary to Committee rules and past practice. By holding
back testimony, Members and staff are afforded only a handful of hours
to review and analyze Administration statements, undermining the
ability of this body to engage in a well-informed dialogue with
Executive Branch witnesses. The White House's process for vetting
testimony of agency witnesses continues to frustrate this Committee and
Congress. This is not the first time testimony has arrived only hours
before the scheduled start of hearings, and I urge the White House to
exercise greater diligence.
My thanks again to our witnesses.
Chairman Hall. And now I am honored to recognize Ms.
Johnson for her opening statement.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I want
to say good afternoon to our witnesses, and I join Chairman
Hall in welcoming you. I look forward to hearing from each
witness today.
As Chairman Hall has stated, we are here to review the
status of the James Webb Space Telescope, which has been the
subject of much attention over the last year and a half as NASA
has wrestled with cost growth and schedule delays on the
project. NASA has now developed a plan for getting the project
back on track, and Congress has provided the agency with the
funding that it has requested for the JWST in fiscal year 2012.
I look forward to hearing about the re-plan from our
witnesses as well as about any challenges and risks that still
exist.
In that regard, Mr. Chairman, I believe that this Committee
is going to need regular updates on this project from NASA so
that we can have confidence that its milestones are being met
and so that we can have early warning of any problems that may
develop. I want to work with you and the agency to ensure that
we get those status reports on a regular basis.
It is very important that NASA ensure that this project
proceeds without further turmoil. As we will hear today, the
telescope's project's cost growth will have a negative impact
on all of NASA science activities, not just those in its
astrophysics division. In dealing with the cuts that will be
required, I think it is important that NASA allocate the cuts
to its science programs in a balanced manner that doesn't
unduly target any single area such as NASA's planetary science
program. I look forward to hearing more about NASA's offset
proposal in today's hearing.
In closing, as we take a look at the status of the James
Webb Space Telescope and the issues the project needs to
address, I hope that we don't lose sight of why the United
States is undertaking this complex mission in the first place.
The National Academies has rated it as a top priority for the
Nation's future astrophysics program, and the scientists here
today will be able to tell us about the path-breaking
scientific research it is being designed to carry out.
But there is something at stake beyond the exciting
scientific breakthroughs and promises. Mainly, like the Hubble
Space Telescope before it, it will have the ability to inspire
coming generations to dream and to want to undertake careers in
science and technology. It is clear that for many of our young
scientists and engineers to be a starry-eyed, starry night, or
a picture of the galaxy obtained from a telescope like Hubble
and perhaps some day from the JWST is the spark that will start
them on their way. In the midst of our scrutiny of the issues
surrounding this, I hope that we don't forget that simple
truth.
I thank you, again, to our witnesses for agreeing to
testify today, and with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back my
time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson
Good afternoon. I want to join Chairman Hall in welcoming our
witnesses. I look forward to hearing from each of you today.
As Chairman Hall has stated, we are here to review the status of
the James Webb Space Telescope, which has been the subject of much
attention over the last year and a half, as NASA has wrestled with cost
growth and schedule delays on this project.
NASA has now developed a plan for getting the project back on
track, and Congress has provided the agency with the funding that it
has requested for JWST in fiscal year 2012. I look forward to hearing
about the re-plan from our witnesses, as well as about any challenges
and risks that still lie ahead.
In that regard, Mr. Chairman, I believe that this Committee is
going to need regular updates on this project from NASA so that we can
have confidence that its milestones are being met and so that we can
have early warning of any problems that may develop. I want to work
with you and the agency to ensure that we can get those status reports
on a regular basis.
It is very important that NASA ensure that this project proceeds
without further turmoil. As we will hear today, the telescope project's
cost growth will have a negative impact on all of NASA's science
activities--not just those in its astrophysics division. In dealing
with the cuts that will be required, I think it is important that NASA
allocate the cuts to its science program in a balanced manner that
doesn't unduly target any single area, such as NASA's planetary science
program. I look forward to hearing more about NASA's offset proposals
at today's hearing.
In closing, as we take a look at the status of the James Webb Space
Telescope and the issues the project needs to address, I hope that we
don't lose sight of why the United States is undertaking this complex
mission in the first place. The National Academies has rated it as a
top priority for the Nation's future astrophysics program, and the
scientists here today will be able to tell us about the path-breaking
scientific research it is being designed to carry out.
But there is something at stake beyond the exciting scientific
breakthroughs it promises--namely, like the Hubble space telescope
before it, it will have the ability to inspire coming generations to
dream and to want to undertake careers in science and technology. It is
clear that for many of our young scientists--and engineers-to-be, a
starry night or a picture of a galaxy obtained from a telescope like
Hubble--and perhaps someday from JWST--is the spark that will start
them on their way. In the midst of our scrutiny of the issues
surrounding JWST, I hope that we don't forget that simple truth.
Thanks again to our witnesses for agreeing to testify here today,
and with that, I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Hall. I thank you. The gentlelady yields back. If
there are other Members who wish to submit additional opening
statements, the statements can be added to the record at this
point or whenever you present them.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Costello follows:]
Prepared Statement of Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics
Acting Ranking Member Jerry F. Costello
Chairman Hall, thank you for holding today's hearing to receive
testimony on the progress and challenges of the James Webb Space
Telescope (JWST).
NASA's astronomy and astrophysics program has revolutionized our
understanding of the origins and evolution of the universe. The program
has made incredible progress, including the scientific breakthroughs of
the Hubble Space Telescope and the five Nobel Prizes in Physics awarded
to U.S. scientists for discoveries enabled by NASA. JWST holds the
promise of building on these successes and maintaining our ingenuity
and scientific leadership, in cooperation with international partners.
While JWST holds great promise for the future of astronomy and
astrophysics, the project has gone well over budget and is far behind
schedule. I am pleased that following stringent review by NASA and
third parties, the agency is implementing necessary changes to bring
the project back on track. But while NASA and its contractors are
moving in the right direction, we must match those technical
achievements with real progress on the management and cost control of
these challenging projects if we are going to sustain our scientific
and technical leadership.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on what steps NASA is
taking to ensure JWST and its workforce stay on track for a 2018 launch
and how Congress and NASA can work together to sustain the astronomy
and astrophysics program in the future.
I welcome our witnesses and look forward to their testimony. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Hall. At this time, I would like to introduce our
panel of witnesses. Our first witness is Mr. Rick Howard,
Program Manager of the James Webb Space Telescope for NASA, a
position he has held since early this year. Previously at NASA,
Mr. Howard served as Deputy Chief Technologist, Deputy Director
of the Astrophysics Division, and has held a number of
positions in the Office of Space Sciences. Mr. Howard is a
graduate of the University of Wisconsin, received an M.S. in
astronomy from Pennsylvania State University, and Mr. Howard,
we welcome you, sir, and thank you. And thanks for the previous
visit.
Our second witness is Dr. Roger Blandford, the Director of
Cavalli Institute for Particular Astrophysics and Cosmology and
the Luke Blossom Chair, I will get all that out in a minute,
and the School of Humanities and Science at Stanford
University. Dr. Blandford also served as Chair of the National
Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey of Astronomy and
Astrophysics. Dr. Blandford received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D.
degree from Cambridge University. And welcome, Dr. Blandford.
We appreciate your presence here today.
Our third witness is Dr. Garth Illingworth, an astronomer
at the University of California Observatories and Lick
Observatory. He is principal investigator of a major Hubble
Space Telescope imaging program and has been involved with
major space and ground projects since the 1970s. He served as
Chair of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee and
has a long record of involvement in science and astronomy
policy. In 2010, Dr. Illingworth served as a scientist member
of the Independent Comprehensive Review Panel that reviewed the
James Webb Space Telescope Program. Dr. Illingworth was awarded
an honorary doctor of science degree in 2010 by the University
of West Australia, and we appreciate your being with us today.
Our final witness is Jeffrey D. Grant, Sector Vice
President and General Manager of the Space Systems Division,
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. Mr. Grant has worked for
Northrop Grumman since 2002, and previously he worked for 21
years at the CIA and National Reconnaissance Office. He
received a B.S. degree from the Florida Institute of Technology
and has earned a number of performance awards during his
federal service. It is good to have you here.
I had a nice visit with Mr. Grant earlier and found out
that his father and I served in World War II, probably at
different bases and in different airplanes. I flew hellcats for
the Navy, and he flew the PBY, and we talked about the PBY, and
he asked me if I would like to have flown the PBY. I said, that
is what every Naval pilot wanted to fly because it took off at
90, it landed at 90, it flew at 90, and pilots lived to be 90.
So I hope your dad is still with us. I didn't get to ask you
about that, and may God bless him.
Okay. As our witnesses should know, spoken testimony is
limited to five minutes, after which the Members of the
Committee will have five minutes each to ask questions.
I now recognize our first witness, Mr. Rick Howard, to
present his testimony. Mr. Howard, you have five minutes, but
we don't have a hook. Just do your best to stay as close as you
can, but your testimony is so valuable, and your presence is so
appreciated, we will have a gentle Chair for you up here. Go
ahead now.
STATEMENT OF MR. RICK HOWARD,
PROGRAM DIRECTOR, JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE,
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Howard. I appreciate that. Mr. Chairman and Members of
the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to appear before
you today to testify concerning NASA's progress and plans to
complete the James Webb Space Telescope. Let me begin by
expressing NASA's thanks to this Committee and to Congress for
its continued support of this program in the fiscal year 2012,
budget. We at NASA recognize that we made your already
difficult task of funding important programs in these
distressed fiscal times even more difficult through our poor
past performance on JWST.
We are, thus, even more determined to restore your
confidence in NASA by delivering a successful JWST on the
costs, new costs, and schedule baseline that we have developed.
It is important to remember why we have undertaken this effort.
JWST will be the world's premiere space-based observatory and
will be both the scientific and technological successor to the
Hubble Space Telescope. JWST will be the most powerful
telescope ever deployed in space and will have 100 times the
sensitivity of Hubble. No other nation on Earth could lead such
a pioneering endeavor.
In my written testimony submitted to this Committee, I
outlined a new baseline developed for JWST and provided
detailed responses to the questions posed to NASA by this
Committee. I would like to provide a brief summary of the main
points of those responses.
You asked about NASA's justification for continuing JWST.
JWST is the primary tool for addressing many of the major
questions scientists have about the origins and physics of the
cosmos. JWST was the top priority large-mission recommendation
in the 2001 decadal survey and was considered foundational in
the 2010 decadal survey.
The independent analysis of alternatives submitted to the
Congress in October showed that the JWST remains the most cost-
effective way to answer these science questions. The JWST team,
including more than 1,200 people across the United States, is
on a new path and has made good progress in fiscal year 2011
against the milestones that we established back in January of
2011. Concerning the progress or the process we used in
developing a new baseline, NASA worked closely with its
industrial partners to arrive at a new cost and schedule
baseline for JWST by undertaking a thorough, bottoms-up
analysis of the work yet to be completed. NASA and our
standing--independent standard review board and other
independent groups then subjected the resulting baseline to
rigorous risks, costs, and schedule analysis. The end result is
a robust baseline that NASA is confident we can achieve.
Let me address the work to go and the remaining challenges
in the program. A significant portion of the work to go is the
integration, tests, and verification of the observatory. This
includes the integration and tests of the instruments, the
optical performance tests of the full 18-segment telescope at
the Johnson Space Center in Texas, and the integration and
testing of the spacecraft and sunshield. These efforts
represent the major technical challenges remaining in the
program.
The major programmatic challenge is maintaining a stable
budget environment and consistent support of the program within
NASA, the Administration, and Congress. The new baseline is
complete, and it is now our responsibility to deliver JWST
within costs and on schedule.
Let me close by, again, thanking the Congress for your
support of JWST, your willingness to fully fund JW in fiscal
year 2012, in support of the new baseline demonstrates your
commitment to sustaining this Nation's leadership in space
science. NASA is committed to completing this program
efficiently and successfully.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this
Committee today, and I will be pleased to answer any questions
you have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Howard follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mr. Rick Howard,
Program Director, James Webb Space Telescope,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Hall. Thank you, Mr. Howard.
I now recognize Dr. Roger Blandford to present his
testimony. Five minutes. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF DR. ROGER BLANDFORD,
PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY,
AND FORMER CHAIR, COMMITTEE FOR THE DECADAL SURVEY OF ASTRONOMY
AND ASTROPHYSICS, NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
Dr. Blandford. Good afternoon, Chairman Hall, Ranking
Member Johnson. Allow me to begin by thanking you and your
colleagues for your support of the James Webb Space Telescope
and for the opportunity to add my personal perspective. I
believe that this support is a courageous recognition by you of
the scientific importance and value of the telescope and an
expression of confidence that NASA now has the management of
this project under tight and realistic control.
Webb is a 6.5 meter infrared space telescope. It provides a
huge increase in performance over previous telescopes and
promises to be a scientific game changer. The two main reasons
the 2001 survey chose Webb as its highest priority
recommendation are its capacity to trace light back to the
first stars and galaxies when the universe was just four
percent of its present age and its potential to revolutionize
our understanding of how stars and planets form in our galaxy
today. These reasons remain valid and are now joined by the
opportunity to study the many, now more than 700, exoplanets
that have been discovered around other stars.
However, Webb will also operate as an astronomical
observatory. Many, and perhaps most, areas of astronomy will be
transformed by Webb in much the same way as they have been
revolutionized by its predecessor Hubble Space Telescope.
On script to discover is like the realization that 96
percent of the universe is in an unseen dark form, that massive
black holes reside in the centers of most galaxies, and that
most sun-like stars orbited by planets are likely to be made by
Webb.
Decadal surveys compel the astronomy community to plan an
executable program for the coming decade and beyond. The
astronomy community respects the outcome of these deliberations
and acknowledges that the most ambitious projects typically
take more than a decade to bring to fruition, which can lead to
delays in realizing newer entries into the program.
The American Astronomical Society, which reflects the views
of the general astronomy and astrophysics community, continues
to support Webb despite the strain its delay is placing on
other proposed missions.
For the above reasons, Webb is a cornerstone of the
scientific program that was recommended by the 2010 astronomy
survey, New Worlds, New Horizons. I believe that if Webb were
not to be completed, then a very large part of the combined
science program of these two decadal surveys would not be
executable, and there would be a consequent call to propose new
infrared facilities to replace Webb.
I believe that launching and operating Webb would be
scientifically transformational and internationally
inspirational. It would also make a powerful statement that the
United States still has the resolve to execute large,
technically challenging, and innovative scientific projects. No
other country currently has this capability.
Thank you, again, for the opportunity to address you. I
hope that my testimony will be helpful, and I look forward to
answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Blandford follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Roger Blandford,
Professor of Physics, Stanford University,
and Former Chair, Committee for the Decadal Survey of Astronomy
and Astrophysics, National Research Council
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Hall. Thank you very much.
I now recognize Dr. Garth Illingworth for his five minutes
of testimony. Thank you for staying within your five minutes,
Dr. Blandford.
STATEMENT OF DR. GARTH ILLINGWORTH,
PROFESSOR AND ASTRONOMER, UCO/LICK OBSERVATORY,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ
Dr. Illingworth. Thank you, and good afternoon. Chairman
Hall, Ranking Member Johnson, Members of the Committee, thank
you for the opportunity to testify today regarding the James
Webb Space Telescope, and I would also like to thank you for
your support of the recent public 2112-55, which included a
full amount of funding needed to get JWST back on track for
fiscal year 2012. This was a crucial step in setting it on the
path for launch in 2018.
The James Webb Space Telescope is Hubble's successor. Webb
will explore scientific frontiers that will not be accessible
to any other telescope in the foreseeable future. It will seek
and find some answers to some of the great questions we have
about the universe, many of which were unforeseen when James
Webb was conceived.
Yesterday, for example, we saw the announcement of the
discovery of a planet, Kepler 22b, in the habitable zone around
a nearby star in our galaxy. Only JWST has the capability to
see if liquid water exists on nearby planets like this one.
The Nobel Prize was awarded recently to three astronomers
who discovered dark energy. Only JWST can take some of the
needed steps to advance this field.
Early this year, my team found the most distant galaxy
ever, a dwarf galaxy that those that led to the building of the
Milky Way; it was a faint blob, very young in its formative
years. We did this by looking back through 96 percent of all
time to when the Hubble was in its infancy. We cannot go
further back with Hubble. Only JWST can explore the first stars
and galaxies.
Chairman Hall, you asked me about the major faults
identified by the independent, comprehensive review panel, how
NASA has responded. The major faults with the JWST Program were
not technical but were related to management and budget. The
NASA re-plan takes great strides in addressing the major faults
identified by the panel. There is now much stronger management
and oversight. JWST is now a separate program office at NASA
headquarters, with experienced staff led by Rick, reporting to
the Associate Administrators of the agency and of the Science
Directorate. Key leadership changes were made in the James Webb
project at Goddard. Communications have improved.
The JWST Program has developed a far more conservative and
robust plan than before and one that is meeting both the
detailed recommendations and the spirit of the ICRP's panel
report. The excellent progress on some critical technologies
like the mirrors and on the recent milestones over this last
year also add to the confidence in the program.
Of course, technical and programmatic challenges remain, as
one would expect of such a unique program with cutting-edge
technologies that have never been developed before. This is the
first time. These challenges, however, do not appear to me to
be extraordinary for such a major project at this point. Big
projects will always have such challenges.
The most critical factors in my mind for assuring that JWST
is launched on schedule and on budget are, one, James Webb
needs to be fully funded with adequate reserves in every year.
Shortchanging James Webb at this point will only create
additional budget and management problems in the future.
The James Webb management team must keep all the diverse
elements of this program focused on meeting their milestones
and schedules during the lengthy period that remains. Both the
project and the independent assessment groups must work
diligently to identify problems and address them rapidly, and
fourth, it is essential the Congress, including this Committee,
continue to be engaged and provide the necessary support for
NASA to be successful on James Webb.
If James Webb is fully funded, NASA will be on track to
launch the largest and most powerful space observatory ever
built by late 2018, within the $8 billion cost cap.
Chairman Hall, I thank you and the Committee Members again
for your recent support that has set us on the path to making
JWST a reality. Launching James Webb will demonstrate again our
leadership in science and technology to a world that has been
fascinated by Hubble's remarkable results. As others have said,
only we, only the U.S., have the capability to do such a
mission.
Thank you very much, and I will be pleased to answer any
questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Illingworth follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Garth Illingworth,
Professor and Astronomer, UCO/Lick Observatory,
University of California, Santa Cruz
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Hall. Dr. Illingworth, I thank you very much, sir.
Mr. Grant, present your testimony, five minutes. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF MR. JEFFREY D. GRANT,
SECTOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER,
SPACE SYSTEMS DIVISION, NORTHROP GRUMMAN AEROSPACE SYSTEMS
Mr. Grant. Chairman Hall, Ranking Member Johnson, and
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting
me here today on behalf of the men and women of Northrop
Grumman who are supporting the James Webb Space Telescope. I,
too, commend the Committee for your continued support and
oversight of the space program and especially with regards to
your interest in the James Webb Space Telescope. I would also
be remiss if I did not recognize NASA's leadership in making
the Webb Telescope Program possible and also acknowledge the
extraordinary contributions of our innovative science
community. It is through our combined efforts and expertise
that we come together to build the world's next great
observatory.
It was in 2002 when Northrop Grumman, then TRW, was awarded
a key contract on the James Webb Program, a larger-than-ever
space telescope required to operate at ultra-cold temperatures,
designed to explore the first stars and galaxies of the
universe, and study extrasolar planets. Without question, these
are significant capabilities and it was a significant
challenge. The Webb Telescope represents a capability beyond
anything attempted by NASA, our Nation, or anywhere in the
international community.
As for our role at Northrop Grumman in the Webb Telescope
program, the estimated contract value over the lifetime of the
program is estimated at $3.5 billion, with nearly half of those
funds already applied to advancing key technologies, completing
designs, and fabrication of critical hardware.
We currently employ approximately 265 engineers,
scientists, technicians, and support staff at our Space Park
facility and partner with 193 suppliers in 31 states across the
country.
In your invitation letter, Mr. Chairman, you asked that I
respond to three specific questions. One, what are the
technical and programmatic challenges facing the Webb Telescope
Program; two, Northrop Grumman steps to ensure costs and
schedule deadlines are met and; three, the role of integration
and testing as we move the program towards completion.
As others have testified here earlier, I reemphasize the
point, our chief technical challenges on the Webb Telescope, I
believe, are in two major areas. One is the completion of the
build and testing of the telescope itself, and two, in building
and testing the thermal management system. Though much as been
accomplished, challenges remain, and we recognize we need to do
better moving forward.
In the second area you asked about, we have responded to
the Casani Panel findings and have made significant management
leadership changes, management oversight changes, and through
improved communications and decision-making processes, have
strengthened our relationship between our team, NASA, and our
partners.
We continuously evaluate actions to contain costs and have
implemented a series of improved financial controls in the form
of metrics, reports, and early alerts. These measures have been
designed to ensure contractual discipline to avoid unintended
cost growth.
The Webb Telescope has a clear path forward and we have
evidence that the current plan is proceeding on track.
Lastly, the Webb Telescope Program has a detailed
integration test and verification plan which was designed to
reduce program risks through methodical, incremental build and
tests, retiring risks at each successive integration level of
the observatory. These integration and test practices have
served our other satellite systems very well as we typically
see our satellite systems last for many years longer than
specified.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I understand the concerns the
Committee has raised and feel confident that Northrop Grumman
has taken the necessary actions to address the technical and
programmatic challenges before us. We are also taking the
proper steps to assure cost and schedule guidelines are met,
and we are enabling our team to successfully reach program
completion by meeting integration and test milestones for the
Webb Telescope. I am honored to join my distinguished
colleagues on this panel today, and thank you for asking me to
appear before your Committee. I welcome the Committee's
questions and ask that my full statement as provided to the
Committee be inserted into the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Grant follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mr. Jeffrey D. Grant,
Sector Vice President and General Manager,
Space Systems Division, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Hall. And I thank you for that and thank you for
staying within your time. We are in a different day and time,
as all of you know very well, for projecting the needs and
selling this Congress and selling the American people on the
amount of money that we are going to put into these programs,
and we have just gone through increasing the debt allowance
there, and then we voted that, and that spawned that famous
committee of 12, supposedly six Republicans and six Democrats.
Well, that wasn't really true. There were six Republicans,
all right, we could name there. There were six Democrats plus
an additional Democrat, who happens to be President of the
United States, and these other six Democrats didn't have the
power to override a veto of that seventh Democrat. It was a
seven to six thrust to start with. So we didn't have a chance
to get that off the ground.
But those are the things we are going to be facing in the
future, and this is a wonderful program, and all of you have
done a good job, Dr. Blandford, especially. You laid out
several real reasons why good things are happening and how you
want them to continue to happen.
But recent JWST progress reports indicate that I think 75
percent of the hardware is already completed, yet a little less
than half the estimated $8 billion development costs have been
spent. If so much hardware is completed, why will it cost an
additional $4.5 billion to complete it?
Who should I ask that? Mr. Howard?
Mr. Howard. Probably me is the right person.
Chairman Hall. Okay. All right.
Mr. Howard. So of the $4.5 billion to go to launch in the
development phase, the biggest elements of the work to go is
the development of the spacecraft, sunshield, and the
integration and testing of all of those elements of the
observatory. That is the instruments, the instruments and
telescope together, and then the spacecraft and the sunshield.
Jeff Grant mentioned a little bit about the complexity of
that effort. The integration and test activity is the most
complicated endeavor that we have ahead of us. This observatory
cannot be tested all fully assembled in the environment that it
is going to see in space at 40 degrees above absolute zero. The
best we can do is to do subscale tests, subsystem level tests,
and tests at the largest level of integration we can, which
will be down in the chamber in JSC where the telescope and the
instruments will be able to be tested but not the spacecraft
and the sunshield. That will have to be done separately. So
that is the significant portion of the work to go on this
program.
The next largest element of the work to go is the
development of the ground system for JWST, which is an activity
that is going on at the Space Telescope Science Institute to
develop and operate JWST and operate the instruments to be able
to provide the observations that the science community will
propose to examine.
Chairman Hall. Mr. Illingworth, you are a member of the
Independent Comprehensive Review Panel. Right?
Mr. Illingworth. Yes. That is correct.
Chairman Hall. And what opportunities have you had to
thoroughly review the re-plan, and are you satisfied that NASA
has put forward a responsible and executable plan moving
forward?
Mr. Illingworth. Mr. Chairman, the committee, of course,
was an ad hoc committee that met for 2 months and developed
this report, which NASA has been responding to for the last
year. So the committee formally has not gathered back to look
at the developments.
However, I have tried over the last year to gain as much
insight as I can because as a scientist interested in this
program, I really want this to succeed. I want NASA to succeed.
And so I have been talking to people across the agency trying
to understand how things are developing, looking at the
material that became available publicly, and as I said in my
testimony and I laid out in somewhat more detail, I feel that
NASA has actually done a very good job on this re-plan. They
have developed a plan that is--I would say uniquely
conservative for NASA in the level of reserves and the approach
that they are taking. They realized that they had seriously
flawed management before the time of the ICRP and are trying to
rectify it as Rick said.
So I am highly encouraged by what I have seen over the last
six to nine months on this program.
Chairman Hall. You know, how much time do I have? Okay. I
got about a minute and a half left. You remember the Augustine
Committee and their recommendation that we needed an additional
three billion a year for two, maybe three years to save our
space station. Our space station is in danger right now, and
our whole program is in danger. Our country is in a dangerous
situation. Money is going to be hard to come by from this point
forward.
I think the last three Presidents have failed, and we, this
Committee and the Members of this Committee on both sides, have
urged them to put more money into the space program where we
could have a chance to save it. That didn't happen, so we have
got a bleak future right now for a wonderful project, and I
will talk with you more about that later.
I think my time is up, and I thank you.
At this time I recognize Ms. Johnson for her five minutes.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
The Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized humankind's
vision and the comprehension of the universe, and JWST promises
to do the same. And while I would like to spend time learning
more about the inspiring science that JWST is being built to
study, instead we find ourselves focusing on budgets and
program challenges.
So I would like to get clear on how we got to this point
with JWST, and as Members of Congress we need to understand how
this situation can be avoided in the future. And so is this a
case of costs being poorly estimated to begin with, leading to
insufficient budget and reserves, or is this a case of the
program being mismanaged, or is it some combination of the two?
I would like Mr. Howard to start and followed by Dr.
Illingworth.
Mr. Howard. Okay. I thank you for the question.
The cost commitments by NASA at the time when JWST was
confirmed, when we passed the confirmation review in 2008, was
$5 billion. The cost is now $8.8 billion. I could give you lots
of reasons and history on how we got to where we are, but this
does not excuse the poor management, cost, and schedule
performance of JWST over that period of time.
I hope that the details on the history and the changes that
we have made that are in my written testimony demonstrate that
we have changed the management priority. The management and the
priority and the approach and have developed a robust baseline
and are ready to demonstrate that we can deliver JWST within
cost.
Dr. Illingworth. Thank you. Let me add to that.
I would say the Independent Review Committee came up with a
number of reasons, but let me just very succinctly put the
reason, the most clearest and simplest reason I can think of.
At confirmation in 2008, this project went from a phase
where it was developing novel, new, extraordinarily high
technologies into a phase where it was building hardware,
testing that to launch. The project management and the program
management overall did not recognize this change of approach,
that now they were in a construction phase, they needed to meet
deliverables, they needed to stay tightly on schedule, and they
could not defer work.
And so the project, I think, was on a path that was never
going to meet. We said this clearly in the report. It was never
going to meet its launch date given that it was deferring work
and driving up the costs as a result.
So it was only when that was identified, NASA took that to
heart, and came back with a re-plan that they got to the point
where I think they can be on track now to launch this within
the cost cap by the 2018 date because they have adequate
reserves in there to meet the problems on a yearly basis.
Of course, provided the budget is provided each year after
this one that is appropriate as needed for 2018 launch.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. Mr. Howard, what signals did NASA
miss about the potential cost growth and other problematic
problems that it should have picked up, and what is NASA doing
about it now in attempting to manage it?
Mr. Howard. I think one of the signals, as Garth mentioned,
was the fact that we knew that we had insufficient reserves in
the early years in this program, even when it was confirmed,
and the attitude was, do the best you can with the budget that
you have.
Now, part of that was because this program was managed
within the astrophysics division within the science directorate
at the agency. That is one of the biggest changes that we have
made. This is no longer one mission out of 30 or so that the
astrophysics division has to try and balance across its
portfolio, and in 2008, 2009 timeframe; just for example, in
that one year, astrophysics had five launches that it had to
support, including the Hubble Servicing Mission, the Kepler
Mission, which we just had a discovery yesterday on, and the
Hubble Servicing Mission and Hershon Blanch, and in those--
typically in astrophysics, I have been there for 10 years or
so, you put your resources on the missions that you have
operating, our assets that are in space, that are doing the
great science, and then the next thing you do is you put your
assets on those missions that are about to launch and need to
be supported to be successful.
And within that constraint that you had, it was very
difficult to add additional resources as JWST found and
identified problems. One of the biggest changes, in my view, is
elevating this program to an agency priority, an agency program
where the funding, the additional funding required to complete
JWST comes out of both the science directorate as well as other
parts of the agency, and that increase in terms of elevating
its priority has been significant in terms of being able to
address the issues and resolve the budget problems, especially
in the near years.
This budget profile, as far as I am concerned, is the best
profile as far as reserves in every year that this program has
ever had.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much. My time has expired.
Chairman Hall. The gentlelady's time has expired.
I recognize Mr. Palazzo.
Mr. Palazzo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman--see an effectiveness
of their government. The sentiment is that our process and
procedures themselves help cause these problems. Professor
Illingworth said in his testimony the pace of the federal
budget process necessarily leads to large lag times for fixes
to be implemented.
What lessons can we learn regarding our system of
budgeting, procurements, and project management based on the
James Webb Space Telescope experience? We can start with Mr.
Howard.
Mr. Howard. Okay. Thank you for the question. I think this
is a learning process that we have gone on over a number of
years at NASA. When JWST was confirmed to start development in
2008, we did not have the tools in place at the time to look at
the--and do an assessment of the cost to go and the schedule to
go. We did not have this current policy in place which requires
doing a joint cost and confidence, cost and schedule confidence
assessment, which is a much more detailed assessment of both
the cost and schedule and how they are integrated together and
the risks associated with that than just doing what was
traditionally done before that, which was just an independent
cost estimate.
So the agency has made decisions to proceed under the
directions that looks at more detailed cost estimating.
With James Webb we had not done that. We have done that
now, so this program and re-baseline was subject to that level
of analysis. One thing that has come up from the ICRP report,
which I think the agency has to look at, is for these large,
complex missions that are very complicated and being done for
the very first time with new technologies and completely in
areas that we don't have experience in before. Should we be
looking at these with a higher level of confidence that we want
to assign to them, higher than the 70 percent that is typically
used in the agency?
I think that is something for the agency to think about and
consider it as we proceed forward.
Dr. Illingworth. Thank you, and as Mr. Howard said, I think
a very important factor here is from the earliest days in
programs like this, ensuring that you are working to a high
level of confidence. In fact, the agency has adopted 70 percent
that the ICRP explicitly said for programs of this nature with
their complexity an even-more conservative approach at the 80
percent level joint cost schedule was more appropriate.
I think if that is done from an early phase and it is
recognized by the key players, Congress, the Administration,
NASA as the group doing the program, then the budget lag issue
becomes a lesser issue. But in the JWST case, it was a catch up
that NASA recognized there was a problem but couldn't catch up,
and until it got to the point where it became a public issue,
and then at that point ICRP got into this, and recommendations
were made. I think this was very beneficial. I think it brought
it home to a lot of people across the whole of the programs
like this, that changes were needed and a more conservative
approach was needed, and I am glad to see from what I have
watched this year, seen this year that NASA has taken that to
heart and really is planning this program with much higher
level of reserves to a much greater degree of confidence.
Mr. Palazzo. Thank you. NASA is planning a number of high-
priority missions recommended for the next decade by various
decadal surveys. How will James Webb cost overruns affect high-
priority missions outlined in the astrophysics decadal surveys
such as WFirst, and to the extent you have insight into the
other science mission divisions, such as Earth science, helio-
physics, or planetary, can you also comment about James Webb's
impact to the greater science portfolio?
We start with Dr. Blandford.
Dr. Blandford. Thank you. I think it is clear that it will
lead to a deferral of the start of these proposed missions like
WFirst, and I think that will also--it will have some impact,
although we don't yet as know what the NASA plan is, and this
will probably be manifested in the next budget, on missions
from other parts of Earth space science.
This is obviously a great disappointment to the scientific
community, but I think it is one that they will have to accept,
and we will, I hope, build WFirst before too long, and it will
have its glorious scientific program ahead of it.
Mr. Palazzo. Dr. Illingworth, do you have anything to add?
Dr. Illingworth. Yes. Thank you. I think Dr. Blandford has
said it very well. It is a key concern for the community. I
think that none of us involved in the James Webb Space
Telescope likes to see changes like this happen that push out
other programs. It is very regrettable, but the James Webb
Space Telescope was the highest priority program, so
ultimately, it becomes a question of priorities. When resources
are tight, that is where we go. We choose the highest priority.
Thank you.
Chairman Hall. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair now recognizes Ms. Lofgren, the gentlelady from
California.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I want
first to particularly welcome the two witnesses from Santa
Clara County, Dr. Blandford up at Stanford, and Dr. Illingworth
from the University of California, Santa Cruz, located at the
Lick Observatory, also the tip-top Santa Clara County. It is
great to have you here.
I think this hearing has been very helpful because
obviously we have a number of questions to ask. First, are we
on track, what lessons have we learned for the future? And then
also I think there is a fundamental question, not for me, but
for the country at large, including some of our colleagues of
why we are doing this. And only when you see the discovery
yesterday by the Kepler Telescope, it renews--my enthusiasm
wasn't lagging to begin with, but, you know, in these times,
you know, why is this important to America? What does this
matter in terms of--make out the case for science but also for
society and why we should make this investment.
Dr. Blandford and Dr. Illingworth, if you would.
Dr. Blandford. Perhaps I could supplement. There was
actually a second discovery yesterday that was reported, which
was by my colleague, Professor Chung-Pei Ma from the University
of California Berkeley and her team reporting on the most
massive black holes found----
Ms. Lofgren. Oh, that is right.
Dr. Blandford [continuing]. In the galaxies, now 10 and 20
billions solar masses, beating the previous record of six. So
the pace of discovery does not let up in astronomy, and it
won't with these wonderful new telescopes. What it does for
society, I think there are many answers to that, but
undoubtedly it inspires young people, many scientists and
technologists, it is an entry point into what they ultimately
build careers on. I think the developing high technology is a
generator of jobs. I am not economist myself, but I think there
is a large multiplier that can come from such projects.
Ms. Lofgren. Well, there certainly has been with all the
NASA programs.
Dr. Blandford. Involving NASA programs and it is
inspirational for all of us. I think astronomy is remarkable
for how communicable the results of contemporary research--how
communicable it has become, and I think the--we can all enjoy
at very different levels the results that come from these
wonderful telescopes.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you. Do you have anything to add, Dr.
Illingworth?
Dr. Illingworth. Yes. Thank you very much for the
opportunity. Interesting, I think, today there is going to be
an announcement that Hubble scientists have published the
10,000th paper with that telescope. This is absolutely
remarkable productivity for an amazing mission.
I think the science is, in a sense, I am questioning, we
all know of Hubble and the amazing things it has done, and
James Webb is its successor. I think more immediately as you
mentioned for the societal interest in this, beyond the
inspirational aspect that comes from a science program like
this, there clearly are jobs. There are high-technology jobs
that are very important that can only be done here. We do them
close links with their contractors, and as Dr. Blandford
mentioned and my wife has pointed this out to me, too, she is
an economist, that there is a multiplier effect which is many
times when you do a unique high tech or skilled job like this,
and so there are job benefits in the short term and over all
time.
Now, after long term are the educational benefits, the STEM
issues, doing science and technology education. This is just so
critical for us, and missions like this bring into everybody's
living rooms as we have just seen in the last day with
announcements of new discoveries, amazing scientific results
that only we really can do with these missions.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you very much. I am already convinced,
but turning to you, Mr. Howard, in your written testimony you
mentioned that these missions are technology providers,
enabling in reducing technology risks of smaller missions that
could otherwise never afford to develop such technologies.
What sort of other benefits may we see from this mission?
What were you thinking of?
Mr. Howard. Yeah. Thank you for asking that. In addition to
developing technologies that other missions, smaller missions
just would not be able to do in the timeframe or without the
resources that were already invested in missions like JWST, the
new technologies developed on these large missions benefit
other agencies.
And so a couple of examples are right now we are actually
flying on Hubble a technology developed by JWST, an integrated
circuit system which was put on for the advanced camera for
surveys, when we repaired that on the last servicing mission,
is technology that came out of JWST.
In addition to that, the innovations in metrology
technology that have been on JW have trickled over into the
medical device metrology measurement of human eyes, diagnosis
of ocular diseases, and improve surgery, and there is a
technology that you wouldn't necessarily have thought applied
over, but it is these new innovative metrology techniques that
we used to develop the large mirrors that has trickled over
into other areas.
Ms. Lofgren. Mr. Howard, I see my Chairman is about to
gavel me out of order. I would welcome the additional lists I
think you were about to tell us. If you could send that to us
after the hearing, I would love to see it, and I yield back,
Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Hall. And I thank you.
Before I recognize Mr. Brooks, I want to recognize Dr.
Illingworth mentioned something about his wife. We have a wife
here of Congressman Hultgren of Illinois. We are very happy
always to have you here.
I recognize Mr. Brooks for his five minutes.
Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, although I believe
that is Mr. Buschon's wife.
Chairman Hall. Oh.
Mr. Brooks. Oh, they are both here. I have been looking to
the left--sorry about that.
Now to more serious matters, but we had the White House
Christmas party last night. That explains a lot.
The Science, Space, and Technology Committee has put
together a timeline concerning the James Webb Space Telescope,
and in June of 1997, the original estimate was a launch date of
2007, at a cost of roughly $500 million. In 2001, the telescope
was identified by NASA as the top priority in the decadal
survey with an estimated cost of $1 billion. In the summer of
2002, we had a mission definition review that indicated the
cost was now $2.5 billion with a launch date of 2010, and March
2005, NASA identified further cost growth. Now, $4.5 billion
with a scheduled slip of two years to launch date of 2012. We
move onto July 2008. We have another program confirmation
review that says that the cost is up to $5 billion and a hope
for launch date of 2014. Then we move to September 2011, and we
now have a baseline of $8.8 billion total lifecycle cost with a
launch readiness date in 2018. So we have had a slippage both
in cost and in launch dates.
I want to put that in the context of some of the financial
issues that America is facing. As many of you all know, in this
last three years we have had budget deficits of $1.4 trillion,
$1.3 trillion, and $1.3 trillion. Our accumulated debt is now
over $15 trillion and is growing at over a $1 trillion a year
rate with no end in sight.
Our interest on our debt was a little over $200 billion in
the fiscal year that ended September 30; however, those were at
record low interest rates, somewhere in the neighborhood of
below a percentage point for short term of treasury bonds,
short term being a year or two or less. Long term, it was a
little over two percent.
Compare that to Italy, which is a little bit further along
the path that America faces with these deficit problems, where
their bond rates are now over seven percent.
If something like that were to happen to America, and if we
continue on this path, then it will happen to America, you can
see our interest on the debt jump from the $200 and something
billion dollar range to $600 billion a year or more.
That all having been said, I think you all can get a pretty
good grasp that we have some serious financial issues facing
us.
Now, what is the reaction that we are looking at right now
in the United States Congress? Well, we are looking at spending
more money. One hundred and eighty billion dollars of
additional debt on our country for this year alone for things
like extending the Social Security and Medicare tax break that
last year was given to American citizens at a cost, by the way
to the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, extending
Unemployment Compensation benefits, the sustainable growth
rate, fixing that, or the doc fix as it is commonly known, to
help ensure that Medicare patients have access to physicians
when they need it. The list goes on and on and on.
That having been said, I would like you all's rather quick
insight on whether the James Webb Space Telescope is truly the
number-one priority for NASA, in which case if we have to
reduce funding for NASA because of all these other issues
hammering us all at the same time, we will know that you are
comfortable with reducing those other items because they are
lesser NASA priorities, or if not, what NASA priorities are
higher priorities?
And Mr. Howard, if you could please go first.
Mr. Howard. Thank you. Sure. I would be glad to. The NASA
Administrator has stated that his top three priorities in the
agency are JWST, SLS, and MPCV, and certainly as the budget
deliberations go on and we see what the actual budget comes in
at, that has to be re-looked at see how we can continue to
produce, to proceed with those three priorities.
I can't predict exactly what will happen for '13, but I
know for in '12, those three programs are funded at the
appropriate level to continue forward.
Mr. Brooks. Mr. Blandford, Dr. Blandford.
Dr. Blandford. It is very hard for me to speak on behalf of
the Administrator in NASA. I don't think I can----
Mr. Brooks. I am asking for your opinion.
Dr. Blandford. My opinion is that science, the space
science program, is one of the things that is most important
for NASA to do. It does it extraordinarily well, and I hope
that in the coming budgets its past successes will be reflected
in the future program that is recommended.
Mr. Brooks. Mr. Chairman, I see that my time has expired. I
don't know if----
Mr. Rohrabacher. [presiding] The Chairman----
Mr. Brooks [continuing]. We have enough time for the last
two witnesses----
Mr. Rohrabacher. We have a new Chairman now. I am going to
make sure that you have the time to make sure that your
question is answered by all of the witnesses. Go right ahead.
Mr. Brooks. Thank you. Dr. Illingworth.
Dr. Illingworth. Thank you. I recognize what you are
saying, and I think that a key path forward out of our problems
lies with education, with technical and scientific education,
and a skilled workforce. I think that programs like James Webb
and many of the other ones in NASA, but particularly the high-
priority programs, are absolutely essential to this, and James
Webb is a 30th--three percent of the NASA budget and less than
1/10 of a percent of our discretionary budget. It is very
small, I think, for the huge gains that it brings for inspiring
our younger people to look to the future and improve our
scientific and technical education.
Thank you.
Mr. Brooks. Thank you, and Mr. Grant.
Mr. Grant. Thank you. I would like to add to the comments
made by my colleagues I personally find the program
inspirational, and we have, early in the program, built a full-
scale model of this James Webb Space Telescope, we have taken
it to Seattle----
Mr. Rohrabacher. If I could take the Chairman's
prerogative, we will give him time to get his question
answered, not something else. Go right ahead and answer his
question.
Mr. Grant. I believe that inspirational programs should be
part of NASA's priorities.
Mr. Brooks. Well, my question was what are lesser
priorities that you believe should be cut, or do you have the
James Webb Space Telescope as the top priority, which by
inference means everything else is what we should be looking at
if we continue with these cost overruns with the James Webb
Space Telescope?
Mr. Grant. I can't answer that question for NASA, for the
Administrator, but what I can say is the program that I find
inspirational and believe the programs that are----
Mr. Rohrabacher. If you could, let us get on the question,
could you answer that question? James Webb is the number one
priority, the rest to be cut?
Dr. Illingworth. This--as Rick said, the Administrator has
clearly stated the top three priorities. I think, as Dr.
Blandford said, science plays a truly major role, and we do it
through NASA in a uniquely inspirational and powerful way
worldwide. Nobody else can do this.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So do you have----
Dr. Illingworth. I have to, you know, give high priority--
--
Mr. Rohrabacher. So you are not going to answer the
question. Would you like to answer the question?
Dr. Blandford. I think the reason why we are having
problems with this question is because we are not--I am not
terribly familiar, and I don't think he is, with the other two
major components----
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right.
Dr. Blandford [continuing]. Of the Administrator.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Howard.
Mr. Howard. So one thing I wanted to point out was that the
NASA Administrator has decided that funding the additional
funds for JWST in this time period still stays within his top-
line budget, what he gets.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Uh-huh.
Mr. Howard. And I think it is important to recognize that
it was seen as this needs to be an agency solution and not just
out of science, not just out of astrophysics, and this is why--
--
Mr. Rohrabacher. I don't think that was the question. Could
you repeat your question to the witness?
Mr. Brooks. Thank you. I am trying to get your individual
opinions, not your assessment of what NASA's may be, although
with respect to Mr. Howard, they may coincide with them, but
your opinions as to what priorities should be advanced, and
where do you place the James Webb Space Telescope? That is, the
James Webb Space Telescope continues with these cost overruns,
what in your judgment are lesser priority items that we should
reduce funding for in order to fully fund the James Webb Space
Telescope?
Mr. Howard. And so just let me finish what I was saying,
which is I think some of those decisions have already been
made, and you will see them in the operating plan that comes
forward next month in terms of where the reductions are made in
space science across the other divisions in order to pay for
the increase in fiscal year 2012 to cover James Webb. That will
be in the operating plan.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I will let the record show that this is a
very significant question and that at least three of the
witnesses were unable to answer the question.
Mr. Sarbanes.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the panel.
I am going to try at the end of my five minutes to ask you a
question you can't answer so I can get 10 minutes of your time.
I appreciate your testimony, and I know you see strong
support for this project by and large here but obviously
concern about the cost overruns, and I thank you for addressing
those head on and indicating any management lapses that were
part of the reason for the overrun are being handled.
I am interested in this--in the telescope for a variety of
reasons. One, I am excited by just the pure discovery element
of it, which I think can energize a whole new generation of
scientists and other careers in the STEM arena, and so
certainly as an education driver it is a significant and, I
think, meaningful investment for the country to make.
But I am also interested in it as an economic driver. Given
the cost associated with it, even with the overruns, I think
that the multiplier effect it has in terms of economic
opportunities and, frankly, jobs that can be created is
significant. I thought I heard in some testimony that there
were over 150, up to 200 different companies or suppliers that
were part of delivering components for this telescope, and I
assume, and I would like whoever would want to address this to
do so, I assume that has kind of a pulling effect in terms of
those companies that are contributing to the effort are
developing technologies for purposes of delivering the products
to the telescope, but in generating those technologies, they
are creating other opportunities for themselves and for their
peers within a particular industry. And that is all about being
an economic driver.
So I think one lens through which we can look at this James
Webb Telescope is through this lens of it being an economic
driver, and particularly an economic driver for the American,
for the U.S. economy.
So if you would like to speak to that, I would appreciate
it.
Mr. Howard. Sure. I will answer that. Thank you. So, as I
mentioned, we have over 1,200 full-time equivalent positions
across the country that are supporting James Webb right now.
That doesn't include an additional 200 or 300 folks that are
working at the subcontractors level and the supply chain
providing, you know, nuts and bolts and fittings and various
things like that.
So it is a fairly large workforce. Of that total there are
only 100 civil servants. So all of this effort is being done in
the U.S. with the U.S. industrial base and workforce.
Both the high-tech jobs as well as what you think are
relatively straightforward jobs like welding structure together
that we need to support and build the telescope and hold it on.
This is spread across 27 States and the District of Columbia.
So the effort is across the entire country and does have that
kind of a multiplication factor in terms of the work that is
done and the things they learn from that, especially in the
technology area where they can then take those, the companies
can take those technology advances and apply them to other
programs within the United States.
Mr. Sarbanes. Mr. Grant, maybe you could speak from the
perspective of the contractor in terms--obviously you have a
certain expertise already in place, and that is how you get the
bids to deliver a product, but in providing the product, I am
sure that you are pulling on your own organization to be on the
cutting edge, and then you work with other subcontractors and
so forth.
So can you talk about that ripple effect? I would
appreciate it.
Mr. Grant. Congressman Sarbanes, one of the examples I
would cite is where we have seen the technology that has been
invested in JWST come to broader use is just in the area of the
optics. We just completed delivery of the last of the flight
segments this year, and the segments themselves are about, from
a density perspective, 20 times lighter than the comparable
optics that you would see on the Hubble Space Telescope. And
what that means to the Nation and future systems is that they
will be able to harvest that technology and put it into other
programs that need comparable large optics or smaller optics at
much lighter weights.
And that is something that has taken us a number of years,
but like I said, we have successfully delivered all the mirror
segments and really demonstrated the applicability of this
technology.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you all very much. I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Are you sure you don't have a follow-up
question to that? Got lots of time for you.
All right. Mr. Hultgren, please.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you all for being
here, and this is really important, and we need to be looking
at everything we are doing to make sure that we are doing it as
well as we can and especially looking at cost overruns and
things, to have that accountability, especially in times like
this where times are tight and as we are forced to prioritize.
I do believe so strongly, we have talked, we have had
amazing hearings over the last months here in the Science
Committee, and really getting back to American exceptionalism
historically in science and just wanted to talk a little bit
about that and wondered if I could get your perspective of the
role that JWST plays really in America being at the forefront
of kind of next discoveries.
Hubble, you know, had so many incredible discoveries and
would like to kind of get your thought from two perspectives.
One, what maybe we could expect from JWST as far as some
discoveries might go but then also that our role in this as
America, how that plays in the international community of
drawing the best and brightest from around the world to be a
part of this type of thing.
So I wondered if you could maybe talk about that if any of
you have any thoughts.
Dr. Illingworth. There is no doubt as Hubble's success--
Hubble has brought worldwide attention to U.S. scientific
leadership and productivity as we travel, and I am sure all of
you had this experience, that coming from this country you go
abroad, people talk, you talk to them about what I do, and they
are just delighted with Hubble. This is so important for us
that we have these programs that we can always look up to as
demonstrations of our leadership and capabilities in science.
James Webb will be that program. Hubble will not live
forever. Probably some time this decade, we will probably see
the end of the life of Hubble. At that point, we really would
like to have James Webb up there to carry the flag forward for
science and for U.S. leadership in this area.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you.
Dr. Blandford. Just to add to that, James Webb, I believe,
will be the magnet that Hubble is being and will bring people
here from all around the world and will be the expression of
the ability of the United States to execute a program of this
magnitude, and perhaps, if I might use an example, which many
of my colleagues work in particle physics, the Large Hadron
Collider in CERN has been a magnet for particle physicists all
around the world, and that would be a sort of candor example,
if you like.
Mr. Hultgren. Yeah. I feel that one personally. I represent
Fermilab, and they are trying to shut it down in the last
month, and I have seen so much go on there, and again, that--it
is going to happen. My hope is, again, that we are active in
drawing the best and the brightest here to America just as
Fermilab had done for 30 plus years.
Continue, I don't know if, Mr. Howard, if you----
Mr. Howard. Yeah. I just wanted to add a couple of points.
I actually think that JW is actually worth more to us now
than it was in the past in terms of what it will be able to
deliver. Probably even more now so now than in the past.
Scientifically, it is going to be able to do things that we
never thought we could do, make new discoveries of things in
the universe, but there are things that have popped up just in
the last four or five years in terms of science questions that
we can't wait for James Webb to get into orbit to be able to
detect.
Water on other planets orbiting other stars. Right now, we
have about 50 candidate planets orbiting other stars that look
like they could support water, the right Goldilocks' balance
between not too hot and not too cold, to be able to support
liquid water. It will take JWST 24 hours of observing time to
be able to look at one target and say whether or not there is
water in the atmosphere of that planet.
By the time we launch, that would be more than 50. I mean,
there will be a tremendous number more, maybe two or three
times more, candidates that will allow us to be able to look
for that question.
That is just one of the sort of important questions that I
think James Webb will be able to do as we move forward.
Mr. Hultgren. I have just a few more seconds, but I
wondered if briefly another thing we focused on here is STEM
education. It has been touched on briefly, but it is so
important, again, for our young people to have something to be
inspired by.
I wonder if you could just talk briefly of how you see this
playing into STEM education.
Dr. Illingworth. I would say quickly that with the advent
of social media and the dissemination of images and results so
quickly, people get involved now in a way that they never did
before. So this is becoming crucial to have these results out
there with the visual images, the power that they have.
Thank you.
Dr. Blandford. I would like to just say that one of the
things that I think NASA deserves great credit for is its
attention it has paid over the last 10, 15, 20 years in
disseminating, particularly to schools, the results of space
explorations. As I said before, these are highly communicable,
and they do excite young people and get them started on
scientific paths which can lead to all manner of different
careers.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, and now we have Mr.
Lipinski.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all
of our witnesses for their testimony, especially Dr. Blandford.
I know, you know I have been out to Stanford, and I have met
with Peter Michelson and others at the KIPAC Kavli Institute,
and I understand the importance of the work that you are doing.
It is clear that we are in tough budget times. We have to make
sure that taxpayer money is being spent wisely, not being
wasted. We need to make difficult choices.
I want to start out, you know, we have had questions about
the budget and specifically about what has been learned about
the processes. I want to focus first as Dr. Blandford, I just
want to make sure this is clear for the record. I know that the
2001 National Academy Decadal Study had the James Webb
Telescope as the highest priority. Then the next one in 2010
assumed that the Webb would be launched in 2014, listed WFIRST
as the top priority.
So I just wanted to make sure that I am clear. Do you
believe that Webb is the top priority right now?
Dr. Blandford. What you said is correct. We took it as a
given that Webb would be launched when we created our program,
so we did not in any sense cross-prioritize as a committee, and
so I cannot speak for the rest of the committee.
My own personal----
Mr. Lipinski. In your own personal opinion.
Dr. Blandford [continuing]. Opinion is that the right thing
to do is to stay the course on Webb and launch it.
Mr. Lipinski. Yes. I understand those things happen because
the expectations were that Webb would have been----
Dr. Blandford. Correct.
Mr. Lipinski [continuing]. Already was far enough under
way, didn't have to be put there as a top priority.
One other thing I wanted to address, when we are talking
about what our witnesses can provide for us, I think going back
to the question that Chairman Brooks had asked, unfortunately
he is not still here, I serve as Ranking Member on the
Subcommittee, Research and Science Education Subcommittee, with
Chairman Brooks, and I think it is an important question of
what difficult choices do we make.
However, I believe that right now the witnesses that we
have here today are not the ones to answer a question about
what NASA should cut. You know, Mr. Howard, being with--in his
position, yes, that could be a question you could answer. The
other three witnesses I don't think really are in the position
to answer that question, and hopefully if that question does--
if the majority wants to have that question answered, that we
will have another hearing with the appropriate witnesses for
that question. I don't think that the other three witnesses
here are appropriate for that question. I think a lot of the
other questions that I was going to ask have already been
asked.
I just wanted to give, first of all, Mr. Howard, the
opportunity, you ran out of time, Ms. Lofgren was asking you
about what were some of the things that we had gained already
from Hubble, and maybe talk about what we could do with the
Webb Telescope.
Was there anything that you wanted to add there that you
didn't have a chance?
Mr. Howard. I think that was in reference to what we have
gained as far as the technology developments for JWST.
Mr. Lipinski. Yes.
Mr. Howard. One thing that I would want to add is, you are
talking about the mirror, the mirror development. This was a
very long process of over 10, 15, almost 15 years to develop
these mirrors, and initially when this started, this started as
a joint technology activity between NASA, the Air Force, and
the NRO to develop large, lightweight segmented mirrors for use
in space. And JWST gained a tremendous amount of insight as to
the development of those types of mirrors for our application,
which is a cryogenic. The DOD has learned a lot from that
activity also and continued on with that activity.
So I think that is another good example of the benefits of
technology development for these large missions such as JWST,
which is not just back into other applications in the United
States, for example, in the medical field but in terms of other
agencies using and benefiting from those activities.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, and I just want to use my last
time to also say that I think the benefits for STEM education
as one of the co-chairs of the STEM Ed Caucus, I think it is
very important that we continue to do this work with the Webb
Telescope and other work that we are doing to inspire as Dr.
Blandford and Dr. Illingworth had talked about, inspiring the--
our students today.
Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, and Mr.
Sensenbrenner.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thanks very much. I hate to be the skunk
at the lawn party, but somebody has got to be the skunk before
we have to go over and vote.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I think the Chairman already decided to do
that.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay. Well, Mr. Howard, did you ever see
the movie called ``The Money Pit?''
Mr. Howard. Yes. Absolutely.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. And you remember that the owner of the
house started out, and there kept on being problems, and there
was more and more money thrown into it, and somehow it never
really did get done properly, at least that is how I recall
that movie. Is my recollection correct?
Mr. Howard. Yes. I think the standard line in that movie
was, it is only two more weeks.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Uh-huh. Well, you know, I have heard
this before with the International Space Station, is that we
threw a lot of money into the International Space Station, and
it was only getting the Russians to do something, and then
there was something else, and then there was something else,
and what started out being an $18 billion project ended up
being $100 billion project, and its completion date was
significantly delayed.
Now, while I recognize, Mr. Howard, that you have only come
onboard the Titanic in 2010, after it hit the iceberg, here we
are talking about a project that has a $7 billion cost overrun
from the initial proposal that we had in 2001. And an 11-year
delayed completion since the Webb Space Telescope was
originally slated to be launched in 2007.
Now, how can we justify this to our constituents?
Mr. Howard. So thank you for that question. I knew it would
come sooner or later.
So I think part of this is we have to realize that early
estimates on the cost of James Webb going all the way back to
the early period of time back in '97, or before period, were
just that, estimates, and the first time that the agency was
ready to commit to a price for James Webb was in 2008, and that
is the $5 billion.
So there is lots of history that I could go over as to what
happened and led from all those early estimates.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. So what you are telling the Committee is
from now on in we shouldn't believe any early estimates before
we start appropriating money, and we should get an actual
proposal and see what is going to happen based on that?
Mr. Howard. I think the early estimates going back to, if
you want to go back to where it was around $1 billion, was for
a very simple telescope, for a meter telescope with one
instrument on it, not a suite of four instruments. It did not
have the benefit of having detailed cost assessments on it----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay.
Mr. Howard [continuing]. Nor the industry proposals.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, you know, the fear that I have is
that you are in charge of a program that is going to end up
gobbling up resources that are available to other NASA programs
just like the Space Station did. Now, I have only got about a
minute and 40 seconds left, and I want to put something else on
the table.
When the Hubble was launched, we found out when it got up
there that one of the lenses was improperly or incorrectly
ground, and we had to send the Space Station up or the Space
Shuttle up on a real quickie repair mission. We don't have the
Shuttle anymore, and what is going to happen if we need to
repair the James Webb Space Telescope or we find out that some
of the parts in the telescope were not properly done and as a
result we are not getting the results out of it that we had
anticipated just like what happened before the repair on the
Hubble?
Mr. Howard. So JWST is designed in such a way that it has
adjustments to each of the mirrors so that we can adjust the
positions of the mirrors rather than----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Again, the Hubble problem was not a
problem of the mirrors being improperly adjusted. It was a
problem of the mirrors being improperly ground.
Mr. Howard. And we have tested that and checked the
mirrors. We have just done that down at Marshall at operating
temperature, each element individually. We are also going to be
testing all the elements together.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. You still haven't answered the question
on how we are to maintain it or repair it or if something comes
up that was not delivered according to specifications, what do
we do if it is in orbit and we don't have a Shuttle?
Mr. Howard. So the answer is that we know that we only have
one chance to get this right. It is going out to L-2. It is not
going to be in orbit around the Earth. It is going to a
distance four times further away than the Moon, and so we are
taking every step we can to mitigate the risks to make sure
that we do have a system that can work.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. You have just increased my skepticism
given the history, and I have been on this Committee longer
than anybody else. I hope that we will have some much better
answers. Otherwise I can see another money pit coming up
because the Space Station sure was that.
I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
Ms. Edwards.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you to our witnesses, and I apologize that I wasn't here
earlier. I did have a chance to review testimony, and just want
to reiterate how proud and excited we are that the James Webb
Space Telescope is managed and directed out of the Goddard
Spaceflight Center in Prince George's County in Greenbelt,
Maryland. The project, as you have described, there are 500
jobs that are supported by James Webb in Maryland, 1,200 jobs
all across the country, and I am sure you have pointed out in
your testimony and response to questions that other than about
100 of those, they are private-sector jobs. And so I think it
underscores the importance of the work that we are doing, the
phenomenal work that is being done in astrophysics that is
actually about job creation, it is about innovation, it is
about the 21st century, and so I appreciate that.
My question, and I just wanted to note for the record, one
of my favorite pages in the Washington Post is in the Metro
section. It is the federal workers, and today on the federal
worker there is a--Roger Hunter is being highlighted for the
work that he has done on the Kepler Space Telescope Project,
and we know now about the just-found planet, Kepler 22b, and
the excitement that is being generated because we discovered
something that we didn't know before with a project that
started out where we didn't know what we would necessarily
find, and I think that that is the hallmark both of what NASA
does and certainly what is taking place with the James Webb
Space Telescope.
I want to ask you, Mr. Howard, just a couple of questions,
and one has to do with, you know, as the lessons we have
learned over this last couple of years with James Webb, you
have highlighted the problems already and the difficulties of
going from an idea and some initial estimates to a full-blown
project and really understanding what the real costs are going
to be and then sharing those with us and developing the kind of
management strategies that are going to be important going
forward so that we don't run into problems.
I wonder if you could tell us about some very specific
milestones that we as a Committee can look at over this next
year where we can hold the agency accountable, the project
management accountable, and know that the James Webb Space
Telescope is on track?
Mr. Howard. Thank you for the question. As I said in my
written testimony in fiscal year 2011, we had 21 milestones
that we were tracking and watching to see that we could meet.
We met 19 of those ahead of schedule or on schedule. One of
those was a month late due to snow, wind, and not fitting into
a C-5 transport airplane the way it was supposed to be
designed, and one we deferred for good reason because we are in
the process of looking at a design change to that unit.
For fiscal year 2012, we have already established about 37
milestones that we have, and of those, the ones that I think
certainly that rise to the highest level of scrutiny and we
want to watch are the delivery of all four instruments, all
four science instruments including the ones from Europe and
Canada will be arriving this year. That will be major
milestones to get those in as we can then start the integration
and testing of those instruments with the integrated science
instrument module where they fit.
Completion of the mirror testing is just about done. That
will be ending up within the next few months. That also is a
major milestone to get those mirrors all tested.
Completion of the center section of the primary back-up
structure, which supports the mirrors, is another major
activity that has been going on for well over, almost a year I
guess, and should be--will be complete in the flight structure
this year, the central core.
And then I would think completion of the fifth sunshade
engineering unit that we are doing, full-scale size of the
sunshade, layer five is probably the most complicated or one of
the most complicated ones that we have, and completing the
engineering unit of that full scale and testing to show that it
will perform properly in space, I think, is another milestone.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Howard, and you can count on me
and I am sure others of our colleagues taking notes about those
particular of the milestones that you have outlined for this
next year and asking you about them, keeping track of them, and
I know that you will do the same, because I think that will
help give us all the kind of confidence that we need going
forward, both in terms of completion but also in terms of the
fiscal accountability I think that all of us expect on the
project.
I won't have time for the question but really want to
underscore the value and the importance, I think, of the
private sector workforce, and particularly the work of Northrop
Grumman and all of the other attendant folks all across this
country who are working on this important project. I look
forward to its completion, I look forward to launch, and I look
forward to us paying attention to the elements of the project
that are going to enable it to go forward.
And I know the difficulty of starting out in one place
where you are imaging something and then trying to respond to a
Congress to get us to make that investment but because it is
science, you don't know what all the variables are until you
get into it, and that, I think, for those who are skeptical
accounts for some of the differences apart from some other
issues that you have outlined that make it really difficult at
the very outset of a project like this and its magnitude to
fully appreciate what the real cost is going to be in
delivering it. And I think that as taxpayers, we are going to
see the value for that dollar even if we can't see it right
now.
Thank you very much, and I yield.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, and the Chairman will
yield such time as he will consume to himself.
Let me just note for the record that I believe that
glossing over incompetence and mismanagement on a scale such as
we are talking about today is not a favor to the taxpayer, and
it is not a favor to the American Space Program. And using an
occasion like this in which we are talking about $7 billion
that is now going to have to be taken out of other space
programs and using this as an opportunity to puff NASA's basic
mission is not doing a favor to America's Space Program, nor to
the taxpayers.
We need to get down to business, and that is why I was
hoping that there would be an answer to the very significant
question that was poised to the panel, and let me note no one
in the panel answered. The only answer that ended up was that
we are going to have the answers in a few weeks when we release
some kind of a document.
Let me just get right to the matter. We just heard people
talking about how great STEM education is rather than this cost
overrun and what NASA is doing for that.
Now, is it possible that we are going to have to de-fund
all of that great STEM Program and all of this education
because of the $7 billion overrun that we are talking about
today? Is that possible? If it is the number-one priority,
isn't that what we are talking about?
So here we are puffing a very nice, good program for NASA,
but at the same time ignoring the fact that this cost overrun
may cost us that program.
Mr. Howard, could you name for us some of the programs that
are going to be totally de-funded because of this cost overrun?
Mr. Howard. The $156 million in fiscal year 2012, which is
the increase of JW over the President's budget request, is
being split 50/50 between science and the cross-agency support
activity. The cross-agency support level with that reduction
takes us down to a level for institutional support to the NASA
centers. It is about the level that fiscal year 2010 was.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right, but what we are talking about
is not just that amount of money. What we are talking about is
an overall budget in the future that then you have to calculate
in which programs will be able to be funded.
Now, like for example, you have the LISA Program, TPF, the
SIM, we got International X-ray Observatory, SHIPSAD, all of
these are on the line, are they not?
Mr. Howard. Some of those missions were not even
prioritized in the current decadal if I remember correctly.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Mr. Howard. SIM has been stopped, was stopped numbers of
years ago before we ran into this situation.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Mr. Howard. But I think it is important to recognize that
in the '12 to '16 timeframe we are talking about $1 billion,
still not an insignificant amount of money, that needs to be
provided above what was in the President's budget request in
that period of time.
Mr. Rohrabacher. If you try to limit the time period that
you are talking about, but if you take a look at the magnitude
of the money and how that will affect things, for example, I
understand the WFIRST, this Wide Field Infrared Survey
Telescope, that is being postponed now, what, for five years,
and when you have budgets, you have budgets, and there is an
impact when people go over budget.
And you could spend half of the time of this hearing if we
want finding how wonderful NASA's basic mission is and how it
is going to inspire people, but if we keep having cost
overruns, you are going to become the laughingstock of the
federal budget process because we will know that we can't count
on what you are telling us.
Look, I supported the Hubble Telescope, even after the
catastrophic mistakes that were made in that project and which
caused enormous new costs to the project that had to be taken
out of other projects, and let me note during that time period
I asked, who was responsible, and who was reprimanded, and who
was fired?
Now, we have testimony today that this overrun is not being
caused by technical difficulties, meaning there has not been
some technical thing that we just can't overcome, but instead
by, am I correct, Dr. Illingworth, you had suggested that it
was budget and management problems?
So maybe say that management has something to do with
competence, if someone mismanaged a project of this magnitude,
their competence would be called into question. If this was the
private sector, it certainly would, and hopefully--this
government agency as well.
Who has been reprimanded or fired from NASA for this? Is
there an answer?
Mr. Howard. Yeah. There is a very good answer to that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Mr. Howard. All of the top management in JWST, both at
Goddard and at headquarters, was replaced.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Mr. Howard. And there is a new team that is in place,
myself being one of them.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. Are they still working for NASA?
Mr. Howard. Those people were assigned to other activities,
some--yes. All of them, I think----
Mr. Rohrabacher. All of them are still working for NASA?
Mr. Howard. They were all----
Mr. Rohrabacher. So did they take a pay cut?
Mr. Howard. I do not know that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So we know no one lost their job.
They just got transferred to someplace, and they are making the
same amount of money. When we talk about responsibility and we
talk about trying to do our best job for the taxpayer but also
for America's Space Program, we are not just talking about
balancing the budget here. We are talking about having a viable
space program for the United States of America.
I don't think that we can just have three priorities for
America's Space Program. I think there are a lot of things to
do, and I tried to be, as I say, there is no one been more
supportive of space telescopes and astronomy than I have been
in my 20 years here.
Six billion dollars more? We are going to take that money
from everybody's pocket. All this other puffery that we have
heard today will be de-funded because of what we are--because
of the incompetence of people that we cannot even take off the
payroll.
We need to work together, NASA and Congress, and by the
way, I am open, and Ms. Edwards, I think, we suggesting that
maybe Congress, there are some things that we were doing that
have contributed to some of these cost overruns, providing not
as much money as we had promised or something like that. Maybe,
Dr. Illingworth, is there something that we have done that has
caused this specific overrun? That the Congress has done? The
vote has been called, so you are all safe.
Ms. Johnson. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. But let me just note, Ms. Johnson has
asked for a closing statement, and I think that is absolutely
fine, considering how much time I permitted----
Ms. Johnson. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher [continuing]. Someone else to take earlier.
Ms. Johnson.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr.
Chairman, and I am just as concerned about overruns as everyone
else, but I wanted to share that some years ago when I was
having to wear glasses for nearsightedness, I was always going
to sleep, stepping on them, sleeping on them, and would go to
another room and left them in another room. And I finally tried
contacts. Because of allergies, I didn't do as well with them,
and I went to an ophthalmologist who suggested that I get some
cornea implants. That research came directly from the
telescopic research.
I had to save up my money; the insurance didn't cover it, I
paid it from my pocket, $5,000 per eye, and now I can see
without any glasses whatsoever.
So that is one thing that this research has brought, and I
had to wait in line to get this surgery. It is much in demand,
and so I just want to say, Mr. Chairman, that when we know that
when research has begun, we have no idea what we are going to
find.
Now, I am much more concerned about a first strike in a war
that we started and we knew we were getting into war and now
that overrun has been almost $100 billion, and so that concerns
me a lot more than making mistakes in research.
Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I think that is a very good point, and I
certainly wouldn't ever ignore that point, and it is a very
important point for us to understand, and my closing statement
basically is this. I have a seven-year-old son, and I have two
seven-year-old daughters, triplets. All right. Well, this
weekend, guess what? A glass just fell off the table, and the
broken glass is there, and did you drop that glass? Did you
push that glass off the table? Oh, the glass just fell off the
table. No, the glass didn't fall off the table. He had hit it
with his elbow. He actually did something to make the glass
fall off the table.
He will learn his lesson. We have got to learn our lesson.
We are responsible when there are failures like this. We are
responsible for the broken glass. We are responsible when we
don't have the money to do other space projects because we have
gone along with incompetence and permitted overruns that are
unconscionable and de-fund other programs. And when we can't
even fire the people and get them off the payroll who are
responsible for this type of travesty, we have got real
problems. We in Congress have to solve when we have
shortcomings as well.
We want to thank all of the witnesses and thank you for
putting up with me here at the end. With the questions
complete, I thank the witnesses for their valuable testimony
and the Members for their questions.
The Members of the Committee may have additional questions
for any one of you, and we will ask that you respond to those
in writing. The record will remain open for two weeks for
additional comments from Members.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:49 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
Appendix
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Mr. Rick Howard,
Program Director, James Webb Space Telescope,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. Roger Blandford, Professor of Physics,
Stanford University and Former Chair,
Committee for the Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics,
National Research Council
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. Garth Illingworth,
Professor and Astronomer, UCO/Lick Observatory,
University of California, Santa Cruz
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Mr. Jeffrey D. Grant,
Sector Vice President and General Manager,
Space Systems Division,
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Appendix 2
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Additional Material for the Record
Ten New Technologies Developed by and for JWST
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