Well. It Looks Like James Webb is Getting Delayed Again, but it Should Still Launch in 2021

The James Webb Space Telescope's Engineering Design Unit (EDU) primary mirror segment, coated with gold. Image Credit: NASA/Drew Noel

This is probably one of the least surprising announcements to come out of the coronavirus pandemic.

During a virtual meeting of the National Academies’ Space Studies Board, NASA’s associate administrator for science, Thomas Zurbuchen, made an announcement. He said there’s no way the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will meet its target launch date of March 2021.

Already on a tight timeline, work on the telescope has slowed during the pandemic.

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Venice From Space Looks Very Different This Year

The Venetian Lagoon is deserted during the Coronavirus pandemic shutdown. Image Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019-20), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Coronavirus shutdown has given us an unprecedented opportunity to look at our civilization a little differently. We all have our own ground-level view of life during this pandemic, but our satellites are giving us another look at this Earthly pause on a grand scale. The latest view comes from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

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Thanks to COVID-19, nothing’s moving, and seismologists can tell

As the COVID-19 disease continues to wreak its viral havoc on the human population of Earth, governments around the world have closed their schools, shut down non-essential businesses, and told their citizens to stay at home as much as possible. In other words, there’s a lot less human activity on our planet, and it’s led to a detectable drop in seismic activity.

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Because of Coronavirus Lockdowns, Europe is Having the Same Drop in Pollution that we Saw in China

Satellite data shows that air pollution over European cities has dropped during coronavirus lockdowns. Image Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019-20), processed by KNMI/ESA

The pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus is creating all kinds of chaos for human society. But for the dear old Earth, and the humans and creatures that breathe its air, it’s a bit of a reprieve. Mirroring what happened in China during lock-down, Europe is now seeing the same drop in air pollution.

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