Jane Edwards
Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush has said he would be open to making the company“™s award fees from the James Webb Space Telescope development contract depend on the successful commissioning of NASA“™s space observatory following launch, SpaceNews reported Thursday.
“As a mechanism to ensure we are all aligned on mission success, Northrop Grumman has actually discussed this with NASA, and we are willing to place all of the fee that we“™ve already earned and the fee that we may earn in the future at risk based on successful activation and demonstration of the telescope on orbit,“ Bush said Thursday during a House Science Committee hearing.
Bush, a four-time Wash100 awardee, also fielded questions about cost overruns related to the JWST project and the company“™s efforts to mitigate human errors.
He noted that Northrop implements a “safety net“ to detect human errors at an early stage and has begun to comply with the independent review board“™s recommendations for the Webb telescope program.
The board“™s recommendations prompted NASA to set March 30, 2021, as the new launch date for the telescope.
