We are used to space missions ending due to the challenging environments of exploration. They run out of fuel or coolant, they are covered in dust and lose power, or they are killed by the cold lunar night. But it feels almost sadder or, at least, less inevitable when the decision to end the mission is due to monetary constraints.
NASA has submitted its budget for 2025 and it is $25,383,700,000 – the same it has been in 2023 and 2024. Twenty-five billion dollars might seem like a huge number, but it is less than 0.4 percent of what the
NASA’s budget plan also includes the proposed request for budgets up to 2029, which provide some insights into the future. An important one that will be felt in high-energy astronomy departments is the slow wind-down of the operation of the
Chandra will be 25 years old in July and the investment in it has been more than repaid as it was expected to work for just five years. It continues to provide high-resolution observations of the universe in X-rays, outcompeting some of the newer high-energy observatories. NASA’s view for 2029 is that the telescope would require just $5.2 million.
“The Chandra spacecraft has been degrading over its mission lifetime to the extent that several systems require active management to keep temperatures within acceptable ranges for spacecraft operations. This makes scheduling and the post-processing of data more complex, increasing mission management costs beyond what NASA can currently afford. The reduction to Chandra will start orderly mission drawdown to minimal operations,” NASA writes in
Chandra, together with Hubble, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, and Spitzer, were the Great Observatories. Spitzer and Compton have been retired, and even Hubble’s budget is looking gloomier. Next year, it will be cut by 5 percent. And it will drop even further in the subsequent years, with some of its operations being merged with
Not all the veteran missions face cuts. Voyager 1 and 2 will see a small increase next year (from $6.5 to $7 million) and a bit more in 2029.
There are several other interesting tidbits from the budget. For example, the Mars Sample Return mission, which has been
Closer to Earth, the
The full budget request can be read