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‘‘We hope pirates don’t take it,” one astrophysicist said.
Getty / NASA / Adam Maida / The Atlantic
NASA’s new space telescope has had a rough go. Name a problem, and this telescope meant to be the most powerful of its kind, a worthy successor to the famous Hubble hasfacedit: poor management, technical errors, budget overruns, schedule delays, and a pandemic. So, naturally, the people responsible for the telescope’s safety are now thinking about pirates.
Yes, pirates.
The topic came up at a recent meeting about NASA’s James Webb space telescope, named for a former administrator of the space agency. Later this year, the telescope will travel by ship to a launch site in South America, passing through the Panama Canal to reach French Guiana. Webb, with a mirror as tall as a two-story building and a protective shield the size of a tennis court, is too large for a plane. Its departure date will be kept secret, someone said at the meeting, ....

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