It seems that Cash-Starved NASA May Have to Nix 1 Space Telescope to Save Others:
Based on the findings of an independent review panel (pdf), NASA has taken stock of its fleet of orbiting astrophysics telescopes and
decided which to save and which to shutter (pdf). Among the winners were the
Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Kepler planet-hunting telescope, which will begin a modified mission designed to compensate for the recent failure of two of its four stabilizing reaction wheels. The infrared Spitzer Space Telescope, however, may be deactivated due to lack of funding. And a bid to convert data collected by the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) into a format usable for astrophysics was also deemed too expensive. (The NEOWISE mission hunts for near-Earth asteroids that might pose a collision risk to our planet and is funded through NASA's Planetary Science Division.)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 25 2014, @01:03AM
An excellent plan! ..until that nasty evil NEO meteorite hits your head. Well head on? or just perhaps your command center or power plant.
Now let's finance some war instead .. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2014, @12:28PM
I'm sure the NSA would be more than willing to buy it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2014, @01:56PM
Jesus Christ, go back to Slashdot. You people get very tiresome.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by timbim on Sunday May 25 2014, @01:58AM
They aren't canceling that one, are they?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AsteroidMining on Sunday May 25 2014, @12:16PM
Certainly not.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2014, @01:46PM
Webb is the reason the budgets are thin for the other spacecraft programs. Webb has been sucking up money from other NASA programs for years because it has become "too big to fail" and it has massive schedule and cost overruns.
(Score: 2) by computersareevil on Sunday May 25 2014, @12:11PM
Stop sending monkeys into space to do nothing and we'll have a bunch more money to send valuable, useful projects into orbit and beyond. Let the commercial interests put monkeys in space.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AsteroidMining on Sunday May 25 2014, @12:19PM
Spitzer has warmed up, and so is a fairly expensive mission that only has 2 (fairly short) IR channels operational, which is why it got the (provisional) axe. The so-called Senior Review [scienceblogs.com] goes into this in detail.