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NASA NTRS · 20210026736

How NASA decided Webb was ready: Inside the risk assessment

Jesse Leitner·Tristram Hyde
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Abstract

Every do-it-yourselfer knows how hard it can be to declare a project complete. Will another turn of the bolt or brushstroke make things better or worse? That was roughly the choice NASA faced a year before the Dec. 25 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. Would more testing close more technical risks in the nearly $10 billion project or create new ones? In the end, NASA decided against more testing. NASA’s Jesse Leitner and Tupper Hyde describe the assessment they performed.

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Jesse Leitner, Tristram Hyde. 2022-02-01. How NASA decided Webb was ready: Inside the risk assessment. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20210026736

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