The Webb Telescope’s Latest Stumbling Block: Its Name
The New York Times
The long-awaited successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is scheduled to launch in December. But the NASA official for whom it is named has been accused of homophobia.
Many astronomers were disappointed when NASA’s up-and-coming space telescope, the successor to the vaunted Hubble Space Telescope, was named for James Webb, a former NASA administrator who led the agency through the glory years of the Apollo missions. Why not name it for an astronomer, the way other space missions — Hubble, Kepler — have been, instead of a bean counter? But they held their tongues.
After all, the new telescope, which is now scheduled to be launched from a spaceport in French Guiana on Dec. 18, was designed to be bigger and more powerful than the Hubble. Orbiting the sun a million miles from Earth, it will be capable of bringing into focus the earliest stars and galaxies in the universe and closely inspecting the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets for signs of life or habitability.
Now a new objection to the Webb name has arisen, inflaming the astronomical community. In 2015, Dan Savage, a columnist for The Stranger, a Seattle newspaper, called attention to the fact that James Webb, before running NASA, had been the under secretary of state in the Truman administration during the Lavender Scare, a period when thousands of gay men and lesbians lost their government jobs as potential security risks. Was this the kind of person to name a groundbreaking telescope after?
