Astronomical Deficit Forces Downsizing of U.S. Telescope Projects

Astronomical Deficit Forces Downsizing of U.S. Telescope Projects
The federal fiscal crisis is pushing NASA and National Science Foundation officials to make painful choices between present and proposed astronomy programs



BOSTON—Astronomy is facing a lean decade. That was the message handed down by senior representatives of the federal agencies that fund much of the field's research in the U.S. during "town halls" with scientists here at the semiannual meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Science agencies are facing flat or declining budgets, and in that environment new astronomy initiatives will often be possible only at the expense of existing ones. "We can turn off the old to enable the new," NASA Astrophysics Division director Jon Morse said in a May 23 town hall discussion. "That's where we are from a budgetary standpoint." NASA funds space-based projects in the U.S., whereas the National Science Foundation funds terrestrial telescope projects.

Morse said that the number of NASA astrophysics missions in operation had peaked at 15 in 2010 and was now in decline with the phaseout of spacecraft such as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. "This portfolio is smaller than it used to be, and it will continue to get smaller," Morse said.

The agency is saddled with disproportionately large costs from building one large mission, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is in some sense the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. But JWST's launch date could slip years beyond the current estimate of 2015, pushing other missions further into the future as well. Morse said the mission's timing was currently under review.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nsf-nasa-budgets