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“I was just told about this,” Paradis told reporters near the launch pad. “I will take the time to fully analyze what it is going on and check with the (Canadian Space Agency).

To pass, the bill will require full approval from the House, Senate and a signature from President Barack Obama.

Standing nearby, Steve MacLean, president of the CSA and an astronaut who went on two space shuttle missions, said the Webb telescope is absolutely worth saving.

“I think the one thing that people in North America will remember from the astronomy program in a hundred years is what the Hubble Telescope has done so far and what the James Webb Telescope could do,” he said.

The Canadian Space Agency said it is not contributing any funds to directly to the Webb. “Instead, we are providing the Fine Guidance Sensor . . . and Tuneable Filter Imager . . . in exchange for telescope time for Canadian astronomers,” wrote CSA spokeswoman Carole Duval, in an e-mail.

“The cost of Canada’s contribution to the Webb is $147 million over the entire course of the telescope’s lifetime including operations after launch,” she added.

Space researchers like Jean-Pierre St-Maurice from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon said losing the telescope would be a big blow to science.

“While I lament the possible loss of a truly great astronomical project, I do worry about runaway costs. If budget estimates were done honestly and reliably we should not be looking at actual costs one order of magnitude greater than the budgeted cost. This kind of practice has to stop,” he wrote in an email.

The Webb telescope launch date has been set back several times and is now slated to be operational as early as 2018. NASA said it intends to lay out a budget that would allow the JWST to launch within this decade.

The telescope is slated to launch in 2014 and use infrared technology to detect the first stars, quasars and supernovae of the early universe with unprecedented sensitivity. It is to be positioned 1.5 million kilometres from Earth.

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