NASA Will Not Change the James Webb Telescope’s Name - WIRED

Odom was tasked with uncovering what proof, if any, links Webb to homophobic policies and decisions. Tracking down grounds of contentious 60-year-old events made for a hard taxable of study, Odom says, but helium was capable to gully connected plentifulness of worldly from the National Archives successful College Park, Maryland, and the Truman Library. “I took this probe precise seriously,” helium says.

These allegations see those made by NASA worker Clifford Norton, who filed a lawsuit claiming that helium had been fired successful 1963 aft helium was seen successful a car with different man. He was taken into constabulary custody, his suit states, and NASA information subsequently brought him to the agency’s office and interrogated him passim the night. He was aboriginal terminated from his job.

Such attraction of national employees suspected to beryllium cheery oregon lesbian was commonplace astatine the time, pursuing a 1953 enforcement bid by President Dwight Eisenhower, which listed “sexual perversion” among the kinds of behaviors considered suspicious. Still, the NASA study states, “No grounds has been located showing Webb knew of Norton’s firing astatine the time. Because it was accepted argumentation crossed the government, the firing was, highly likely—though, sadly—considered unexceptional.”

The study and NASA’s announcement frustrate critics who for years person been making a lawsuit to alteration JWST’s name. “Webb has astatine champion a analyzable legacy, including his information successful the promotion of intelligence warfare. His activities did not gain him a $10 cardinal monument,” wrote Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, an astrophysicist astatine the University of New Hampshire, and 3 different astronomers and astrophysicists successful a statement connected Substack today. They question the mentation that a deficiency of explicit grounds implies that Webb had nary cognition of, oregon manus in, firings wrong his ain agency, writing: “In specified a scenario, we person to presume helium was comparatively incompetent arsenic a leader: the head of NASA should cognize if his main of information is extrajudicially interrogating people.”

Prescod-Weinstein believes the timing of this release—on the Friday day earlier the Thanksgiving holiday—isn’t a coincidence, a mode to marque the study little wide read. “The information that they did it adjacent though it’s LGBT STEM Day tells you astir the administration’s priorities,” she wrote successful an email to WIRED.

NASA usually names telescopes after prominent astronomers, similar the Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, and Compton telescopes. Webb is an exception. He led the bureau portion it precocious the abstraction programme toward the satellite landing and promoted astronomy research, but helium was a bureaucrat, not an astronomer.

Even though bureau officials made the telephone to support Webb’s name, Odom says, “We should inactive usage this past arsenic an illustration of a past that was traumatic for a batch of people. This past, immoderate Webb’s relation successful it was, is important to america going forward.”

That NASA is choosing not to rename the scope is “not surprising, but disappointing,” says Ralf Danner, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer and cochair of the American Astronommical Society’s committee for intersexual predisposition and sex minorities successful astronomy. Whether Webb knew of Norton’s treatment, oregon whether grounds of that exists, is not truly relevant, Danner argues, since Webb stood for those policies arsenic NASA administrator. “He’s conscionable the incorrect sanction to amusement the aboriginal of astronomy.”