This morning I saw the most accurate headline of the year. On Slate, editors wrote, “Astronomers are freaking out over the launch of the James Webb telescope.”

NASA seems pretty darn certain that the JWST is going up on Christmas Eve at 0-dark-20 for most of us here in the Americas (12:20 UTC, 7:20 Eastern, 4:20 Pacific). [Ed. note: This was changed to Christmas Day, December 25, after the show was recorded.]

This telescope is named after a NASA administrator who is controversial and may have been part of the Lavender Scare at NASA. For this reason, we will always refer to this scope as JWST.

This is a huge telescope. The idea of iterative design was thrown out the window as NASA jumped from telescopes that could launch in their final form to a system that origamis into its rocket fairing. Made of eighteen hexagonal mirrors, the infrared telescope has a 6.5-meter diameter and is kept cool with a series of baffles that block sunlight and air gap – or rather vacuum gap –  the scope from any heat. It is the hope of the astronomy community that this massive system will be able to collect enough light to reveal the first galaxies and stars forming in the universe and resolve worlds orbiting nearby stars. This is not a replacement for Hubble; JWST is something new, working in wavelengths more like Spitzer or Herschel.

This is the single most expensive system for science we have ever attempted to put in orbit. Originally planned to go up in 2007, it is also over budget, over schedule, and is the financial black hole that ate the funding that might otherwise have fuelled countless careers and smaller observing systems. The cost for this was paid not just in dollars but also in how many jobs could exist in our field and how much research could be done. The entire astronomy community is currently holding its breath waiting to see if what we paid was worth it. If everything works, the answer will be yes, but there is a lot that could go wrong.

We will be hosting a launch watch party on Twitch.tv/CosmoQuestX.

I will probably not be on stream. I may be in the background calmly having a panic attack or drinking egg nog. Or both. Both are an option.

This is your reminder that Space is Hard.

Back in 2014, I was giving a seminar on “How to cover live events with social media” while Orbital ATK was gearing up to launch an Antares from Wallops. Onboard was the Arkyd 3 satellite from Planetary Resources. This was the perfect teachable moment: there was a crowd-funded satellite going up on a young rocket, and it was all going out on NASA TV.

And then the rocket blew up on launch.

It was still a teachable moment, but not the kind I was looking for.

A few years later, when I was filling out the standard forms to hire a new social media person, I checked “Crisis Communications” as a needed skill, and as a required example, I put “communicate explosion of rocket carrying project-related spacecraft” (OSIRIS-REx, I was worried about you). HR rejected my form and said that wasn’t a realistic concern.

At this point in my career, I have had one telescope I needed fail to function on time (HET, I’m looking at you), one X-ray telescope just plain fail (hi, ASTRO-E), and despite transforming my career to mostly use archival data, I had a grant put on hold when the Hubble Space Telescope ran into issues and required servicing back in 2009.

This is the life of an astronomer. We are at the whims of government funding, the functionality of our equipment, and our lives are punctuated with the explosions of rockets carrying the hopes and dreams of our future research.

Right now, the hopes and dreams of four generations of astronomers are sitting on top of a rocket in French Guiana. Once the rocket launches (and we aren’t that worried about the Ariana 5 behaving), we get to hold our breath through the release of the fairings, AND THEN, we have to wait and see if this sucker can unfold all its bits and bobs.

Unfolding is problematic. From Skylab’s solar panels to Galileo’s high-gain antenna failure, to most recently seeing Lucy’s solar array not latching correctly into place – moving pieces have lots of ways to disappoint, and JWST has a lot of unfolding to do. And this is scary.

Oh, and there are over 300 single points of failure.

Sometimes, it is best to emotionally prepare for the worst.

Back in the summer of 1994, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 plunged into the surface of Jupiter as a string of falling ice chunks. I was at Kitt Peak that summer as a student, and while we were prepping to observe, we were all told to expect nothing. It would be easier if we expected nothing, and nothing happened. I now go into every launch expecting the worst while a tiny voice screams and cheers, still expecting the best.

As we go into the launch and deployment of the JWST, please remember: space is hard; everything or anything could go wrong; failure is always an option, but we must dare mighty things, and expect the worst while nurturing that tiny voice that still dares to dream.

We will see you Friday [Ed. note: Saturday!] morning at 0-dark-20. Bring egg nog.

More Information

Launch Readiness Review Complete (NASA)

James Webb Space Telescope Launch Update (NASA)