James Webb led NASA within the Fifties and 60s, in the course of the Cold War–period “Lavender Scare,” when authorities companies typically enforced insurance policies that discriminated towards homosexual and lesbian federal staff. For that cause, astronomers and others have lengthy called for NASA to change the name of the James Webb Space Telescope. Earlier this yr, the area company agreed to finish a full investigation into Webb’s suspected position within the remedy and firing of LGBTQ workers.

This afternoon, NASA launched that long-awaited report by the company’s chief historian Brian Odom. In an accompanying press release, NASA officers made clear that the company won’t change the telescope’s identify, writing: “Based on the available evidence, the agency does not plan to change the name of the James Webb Space Telescope. However, the report illuminates that this period in federal policy—and in American history more broadly—was a dark chapter that does not reflect the agency’s values today.”

Odom was tasked with discovering what proof, if any, hyperlinks Webb to homophobic insurance policies and selections. Tracking down proof of contentious 60-year-old occasions made for a troublesome topic of examine, Odom says, however he was in a position to attract on loads of materials from the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and the Truman Library. “I took this investigation very seriously,” he says.

These allegations embrace these made by NASA worker Clifford Norton, who filed a lawsuit claiming that he had been fired in 1963 after he was seen in a automobile with one other man. He was taken into police custody, his lawsuit states, and NASA safety subsequently introduced him to the company’s headquarters and interrogated him all through the evening. He was later terminated from his job.

Such remedy of federal workers suspected to be homosexual or lesbian was commonplace on the time, following a 1953 government order by President Dwight Eisenhower, which listed “sexual perversion” among the many sorts of behaviors thought-about suspicious. Still, the NASA report states, “No evidence has been located showing Webb knew of Norton’s firing at the time. Because it was accepted policy across the government, the firing was, highly likely—though, sadly—considered unexceptional.”

The report and NASA’s announcement frustrate critics who for years have been making a case to change JWST’s name. “Webb has at best a complicated legacy, including his participation in the promotion of psychological warfare. His activities did not earn him a $10 billion monument,” wrote Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, an astrophysicist on the University of New Hampshire, and three different astronomers and astrophysicists in a statement on Substack at the moment. They query the interpretation {that a} lack of specific proof implies that Webb had no information of, or hand in, firings inside his personal company, writing: “In such a scenario, we have to assume he was relatively incompetent as a leader: the administrator of NASA should know if his chief of security is extrajudicially interrogating people.”

Prescod-Weinstein believes the timing of this launch—on the Friday afternoon earlier than the Thanksgiving vacation—isn’t a coincidence, a method to make the report much less broadly learn. “The fact that they did it even though it’s LGBT STEM Day tells you about the administration’s priorities,” she wrote in an e-mail to WIRED.

NASA normally names telescopes after outstanding astronomers, just like the Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, and Compton telescopes. Webb is an exception. He led the company whereas it superior the area program towards the moon touchdown and promoted astronomy analysis, however he was a bureaucrat, not an astronomer.

Even although company officers made the decision to maintain Webb’s identify, Odom says, “We should still use this history as an example of a past that was traumatic for a lot of people. This past, whatever Webb’s role in it was, is important to us going forward.”

That NASA is selecting to not rename the telescope is “not surprising, but disappointing,” says Ralf Danner, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer and cochair of the American Astronommical Society’s committee for sexual orientation and gender minorities in astronomy. Whether Webb knew of Norton’s remedy, or whether or not proof of that exists, isn’t actually related, Danner argues, since Webb stood for these insurance policies as NASA administrator. “He’s just the wrong name to show the future of astronomy.”