James Webb Space Telescope Launch Delayed to Christmas Eve—or Later

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December 16, 2021

Dear Reader, This is our last Space & Physics newsletter of 2021. Science, of course, marches on uninterrupted⁠—and Scientific American will, too⁠—but you'll have to keep up to speed by checking our website and social media. Our lead story this week offers a brief preview of the most epochal event of the holiday season: the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which has now been delayed to no earlier than Christmas Eve. With any luck, Santa will bring us all a gift of a flawless lift-off and deployment for the observatory, which has been in various stages of development for more than 30 years and has a total price-tag in excess of $10 billion. Presuming no further delays, log on next Friday to read our coverage of this exciting milestone in astronomy! We wish each and every one of you a wonderful holiday season, and a happy new year. Onward to 2022!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Astronomy James Webb Space Telescope Launch Delayed to Christmas Eve--or Later A communications glitch between the observatory and its launch vehicle forced the delay, NASA officials say By Hanneke Weitering,SPACE.com

Astrophysics NASA Launches IXPE, a New X-ray Space Telescope The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer will probe the physics behind black holes, neutron stars and other dynamic cosmic objects By Amy Thompson,SPACE.com

Astrophysics NASA Spacecraft 'Touches' the Sun for the First Time Ever The Parker Solar Probe has passed through a boundary and into the Sun's atmosphere, gathering data that will help scientists better understand stars By Alexandra Witze,Nature magazine

Space Exploration What Is a Lagrange Point? NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will travel to a special spot where the gravity from Earth and the sun is balanced By Clara Moskowitz,Matthew Twombly

Quantum Physics On the Heels of a Light Beam By Andrea Gawrylewski

Quantum Physics In a First, Physicists Glimpse a Quantum Ghost After a decade of work, researchers have achieved the first ever experimental reconstruction of a quantum wave function By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Cosmology Astronomers Spot Two Dust Bunnies Hiding in the Early Universe The scientists found several previously hidden galaxies that date back to 13 billion years ago—and many more might be missing from our current census of the early universe. By Christopher Intagliata | 02:20

Quantum Physics Reprogrammable Eutelsat Quantum Satellite Shifts Missions on the Fly A new type of satellite opens mobile possibilities By Dhananjay Khadilkar

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Space & Physics, Volume 4, Issue 6

QUOTE OF THE DAY "When it's Webb, there are no small problems." Thomas Zurbuchen, science chief at NASA

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Proposed Interstellar Mission Reaches for the Stars, One Generation at a Time Starting in the early 2030s, the project could become our first purposeful step out of the solar system—if it launches at all By Lee Billings | November 2019

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