Cost overruns and delays add up to $6.5 billion for NASA's next-gen space telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that promises to peer deeper into space and further back into the universe’s history, will cost at least $1.5 billion more than the $5 billion NASA estimated just two years ago. Moreover, the telescope will need an infusion of $200 million of that additional money in the next year, and a similar infusion the year after that, if it is to be launched in 2015. If the mission is delayed further, costs will only escalate.