The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is on track for launch in 2018 with the approval of the US Congress of the 2012 budget for NASA, which includes $530 million for the JWST.

However, the NASA will have reduce its funding for commercial space taxis as Congress approved less than half of what the White House had proposed for this project.

The JWST, which was almost cancelled due to funding constraints, will follow up on the work of the Hubble Space Telescope to study the formation of the first galaxies and look for possible signs of life in the atmospheres of Earth-like exoplanets.

US lawmakers had earlier threatened to cancel the project because of ballooning costs and delays in schedule. Now the JWST project will be pursued, but lawmakers warned that the project will be reviewed again if its overall cost will go beyond the $8 billion allocation.

Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, a JWST's advocate in Congress, has warned NASA to keep the project's costs under control. "We cannot accept any further overruns," she said.

With the JWST assured fo funding to move full speed ahead, NASA will have to wait a little longer before they can fly space taxis as Congress approved only $406 million for developing space taxis.

With a reduced budget to support companies developing space taxis, it would take a longer time before commercial space taxis, which are supposed to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station in the post-shuttle era, to go on operations.

With the retirement of space shuttles this summer, NASA has depended on Russia to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station at the cost of $50 million per person. NASA had hoped that the space taxis soon see operations so that this costly arrangement will soon be over.