Observing budget cuts threaten the groundbreaking science of the Webb Telescope

The Webb Space Telescope’s mission is threatened—not by anything in the sun’s desolate outskirts, but by potential budget cuts.

Webb is performing better than expected, astronomers say, but reduced funding for the telescope’s operation could threaten the rate and quality of the mission’s results. A funding shortfall could reduce the mission’s effectiveness as early as fall 2025. According to Spacenews.

NASA’s latest request for the telescope’s future budget will cut the mission’s operating budget by 20 percent, according to Tom Brown, head of the Webb Telescope mission office at the Space Telescope Institute.

The Webb Space Telescope begins science operations in July 2021. Images Space at infrared and near-infrared wavelengths, setting it apart from the 35-year-old Hubble Space Telescope, which images from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths. Webb can image the oldest light we can detect, allowing the telescope to see Individual stars and galaxies from the early universe.

Webb can only observe one thing at a time, and there is only so much time to observe the telescope. Brown told Gizmodo that telescope time is being oversubscribed at a 9:1 ratio — meaning almost 10 times as many scientists are asking for telescope time than are being provided.

According to a presentation According to Brown, shared at a town 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 shortfall on a budget even with top tier flat funding.

“If the budget cuts go into effect, the impact will reduce all aspects of operations,” Brown told Gizmodo in an email. Everything from program solicitation and peer review, to observation planning and scheduling, to data calibration and analysis, community service and more, will be affected by Webb’s proposed budget cuts.

“These cuts would reduce the observatory’s efficiency and slow response to anomalies, thereby reducing the amount of observation time available,” Brown added. “Cuts would reduce 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 reducing science performance and mission impact .”

Webb had A surprisingly perfect start Into space in December 2020, which means less fuel is used by launching into space than expected. The salvaged fuel meant the mission’s life would be longer than scientists had predicted—perhaps up to 20 years, against the mission’s minimum baseline of five years.

But the telescope won’t last forever, so it’s imperative that scientists optimize their time with Webb. In the latest request for proposals only, the Space Telescope Science Mission team received 2,377 proposals for time with the telescope. The demand for the telescope’s time is a measure of its importance to science, which is not concerned with a shrinking budget proposal. It’s critical that NASA find a workable solution or their decade-marking mission will be just two years short of its (potentially) two-decade run.