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Latest shutdown to curtail NASA activities - SpaceNews.com

A partial government shutdown that started Dec. 22 will once again force NASA to halt most of its non-essential activities and could hinder coverage of spaceflight events planned for the end of the year.

NASA is among the agencies whose funding lapsed at midnight Eastern time Dec. 22 when a continuing resolution (CR) that had been funding them expired. NASA is funded by the commerce, justice and science appropriations bill, one of seven yet to be passed by Congress. Five other bills, including for the Defense Department, have been passed, and those agencies are not affected by the shutdown.

[...] NASA updated its shutdown plan Dec. 18. That plan is similar to the one it followed in its January shutdown, where the agency continues critical activities related to International Space Station and other spacecraft operations, any critical spaceflight hardware processing and general protection of life and property. All other activities will be suspended for the duration of the shutdown.

[...] An extended shutdown could jeopardize the agency's ability to publicize some upcoming events, including the flyby of the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, also known as Ultima Thule, by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. The spacecraft will make its closest approach to the distant body just after midnight Eastern Jan. 1, and NASA had planned to provide extensive coverage of the event on NASA TV and on the web.

However, NASA's current shutdown plan, like previous ones, notes that, in the event of a shutdown, "Citizens will not have televised access to NASA operations and programming or access to the NASA Web site." During the January shutdown, NASA interrupted NASA TV programming and stopped updating its website and social media.

The flyby itself, though, will not be affected by the shutdown should it continue through the rest of the year. The spacecraft is operated from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland, which will also host events for the flyby. Michael Buckley, an APL spokesman, said Dec. 20 that those events will proceed even if the government shutdown continues. Without NASA TV or its website, he said, "we'd likely use APL's web and social media resources" to cover the flyby.

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