Monisha Ravisetti is Space.com's Astronomy Editor. She covers black holes, star explosions, gravitational waves, exoplanet discoveries and other enigmas hidden across the fabric of space and time. Previously, she was a science writer at CNET, and before that, reported for The Academic Times.
A view of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory after being deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia's STS-93 mission on July 23, 1999.Last week, an ominous letter was published to the Chandra X-ray Observatory's website."Dear Chandra community," it starts,"As many of you are aware, the NASA budget for FY25 and beyond was released…" for the next few years. It's a budget that paints Chandra's future as a bleak one — a budget that would leave Chandra's mission behind.
"I start most of my mornings listening to a brief 9 a.m. tag-up meeting at which Chandra status is reported by the team," Slane said."I'm used to hearing the calm voice of Paul Viens, our lead engineer, with his usual description: 'There is nothing to report from engineering; things are quiet with the spacecraft. This kicks off the beginning of another productive day with Chandra. It is sad to imagine those same words in a different context.
"In January," Slane said,"we went through an earlier budget exercise for which we were directed to assess impacts of a budget for FY25 that remained at FY24 levels. The impacts were very significant." Next month, both projects will undergo a review at which presentations will be made to NASA and a team of panelists. These presentations will offer options for scenarios under which some form of the projects might continue under the new budget guidelines, Slane says.
However, Slane writes in response, the temperatures of Chandra components definitely have been increasing, which has ultimately made scheduling observations complicated — but this is a known situation that's been happening since 2005, and thermal models and mitigation processes have been put into place to manage those effects with"amazing success." He also notes that"active management" is too vague a term because Chandra isn't really"actively managed.
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