JWST fail incoming:
For JWST to meet it's October launch date in South America, the launch contract demands it arrive 65 days before launch, which means that the JWST needs to arrive in August. The slow boat ride from Long Beach, through the Panama Canal, to the launch site takes several weeks, assuming the canal isn't blocked, so the boat needs to leave the west coast by late July to arrive on time. Loading JWST onto the boat is also forecast as a somewhat time consuming event, shipping it from the production site only takes a day, but thats one day out of not all that many remaining. Adding it all up shows that there are only two months left before it needs to be packaged and ready to go.
https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/status/index.html
Most recent update
>Completed 12/16/20
JWST is also currently $400 million over it's budget allotment, hopefully they already paid for their boat ticket or they might come up short.
For JWST to meet it's October launch date in South America, the launch contract demands it arrive 65 days before launch, which means that the JWST needs to arrive in August. The slow boat ride from Long Beach, through the Panama Canal, to the launch site takes several weeks, assuming the canal isn't blocked, so the boat needs to leave the west coast by late July to arrive on time. Loading JWST onto the boat is also forecast as a somewhat time consuming event, shipping it from the production site only takes a day, but thats one day out of not all that many remaining. Adding it all up shows that there are only two months left before it needs to be packaged and ready to go.
https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/status/index.html
Most recent update
>Completed 12/16/20
JWST is also currently $400 million over it's budget allotment, hopefully they already paid for their boat ticket or they might come up short.
