The Webb Space Telescope mission is threatened – not by anything in the desert outskirts of the sun, but by possible budget cuts.
Webb is performing better than expected, astronomers say, but reduced funding for the telescope’s operation could jeopardize the rate and quality of the mission’s results. The funding shortfall could reduce the effectiveness of the mission as early as Fall 2025, According to SpaceNews.
NASA’s latest request for the telescope’s future budget would cut the mission’s operating budget by 20%, according to Tom Brown, head of the Webb Mission Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
The Webb Space Telescope began scientific operations in July 2021. Webb Pictures The Cosmos at infrared and near-infrared wavelengths, which sets it apart from the 35-year-old Hubble Space Telescope, which takes images from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths. Webb can image the most ancient light we can detect, allowing the telescope to see Individual stars And Galaxies of the early universe.
Webb can only observe one thing at a time, and there is only so much observing time available on the telescope. Brown told Gizmodo that time on the telescope is signed by a ratio of 9: 1 – meaning almost 10 times, because more scientists want time on the telescope than it has it.
According to a presentation of Brown shared at city hall earlier this month, Webb’s operating costs were set “ideally low in 2011.” Combined with higher-than-expected inflation and less flexibility in NASA’s budget, Webb faces a budget shortfall even with flat top-level funding.
“If the budget cuts were to go into effect, the impact would cut all aspects of operations,” Brown told Gizmodo in an email. Everything from solicitation and fellowship, to planning and scheduling of observations, to calibration and data analysis, public outreach, and more would be affected by the proposed cuts to Webb’s budget.
“These cuts would decrease observatory efficiency and slow response to anomalies, thus reducing the amount of observation time available,” Brown added. “The cut would decrease the cadence and fidelity of instrument calibration, reduce support for the observing modes associated with the four science instruments, and even reduce the number of instrument modes available for science, thereby decreasing the scientific productivity and impact of the mission.”
Webb had a surprisingly perfect launch Into space in December 2020, meaning less fuel was used carrying the telescope into space than expected. The fuel saved meant the mission’s lifetime would be longer than scientists projected — perhaps up to 20 years, up from a minimum mission baseline of five years.
But the telescope won’t last forever, so it’s imperative that scientists optimize their time with Webb. In the last request for proposals alone, the Space Telescope Science Institute Webb Mission Team received 2,377 proposals for time with the telescope. Demand on the telescope’s time is a measure of its importance to science, one that does not jibe with the shrunken budget proposal. It’s critical that NASA find a workable solution, or their marquee mission of the decade will be underwhelming just two years into its (potentially) two-decade run.
