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When will the James Webb Space Telescope be launched?

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is an bus-sized telescope designed to replace the ageing Hubble Space Telescope. It is very cool.

In 1997, it was expected to be launched in 2007 for a budget of 0.5 billion $. It has since been rescheduled many times. As of the first of March 2019, NASA expects to launch it on the 30th of March 2021, for a budget of 9.66 billion $.

Question: When will the JWST be launched?

This resolves when the JWST is mounted on a rocket and the rocket engines are ignited with the intent of taking off. It also resolves if the JWST reaches space (defined as an altitude of 100 km, aka the Kármán line) through any other mean. The question resolves ambiguous if there are definitive reports that JWST is cancelled.

For the purposes of this question, any telescope that has ever officially been called "JWST", has a 6.5 meters honeycomb mirror, and is put either to L2 or L3, counts as the JWST. However the final telescope needs to be sent in a single piece accounting for >90% of its mass, otherwise this resolves ambiguous.

This closed binary question asked if the JWST would be launched before 2020. It closed in July 2018 at 1%.

This still open question asks if the JWST will be a success, conditional on launching.

Categories: Physical Sciences – Astrophysics and Cosmology , Technology – Space

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Predictions are the heart of Metaculus. Predicting is how you contribute to the wisdom of the crowd, and how you earn points and build up your personal Metaculus track record.

The basics of predicting are very simple: move the slider to best match the likelihood of the outcome, and click predict. You can predict as often as you want, and you're encouraged to change your mind when new information becomes available. With tachyons you'll even be able to go back in time and backdate your prediction to maximize your points.

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Use the community stats to get a better sense of the community consensus (or lack thereof) for this question. Sometimes people have wildly different ideas about the likely outcomes, and sometimes people are in close agreement. There are even times when the community seems very certain of uncertainty, like when everyone agrees that event is only 50% likely to happen.

When you make a prediction, check the community stats to see where you land. If your prediction is an outlier, might there be something you're overlooking that others have seen? Or do you have special insight that others are lacking? Either way, it might be a good idea to join the discussion in the comments.