About a week before the presidential election, NASA invited reporters to its facility in Greenbelt, Maryland, to look at the observatory it hopes to launch in two years, to a point far beyond Hubble’s orbit, where it will continue that telescope’s search for distant stars and galaxies. Charlie Bolden, the head of the space agency, took questions, including one from a reporter for The Guardian , who asked Bolden whether the program was safe, regardless of the election’s outcome.