James Webb, Hubble space telescopes face reduction in operations

https://www.astronomy.com/science/james-webb-hubble-space-telescopes-face-reduction-in-operations-over-funding-shortfalls/

by geox • 1 year ago

170 97 1 year ago

astronomy.com

stogot• 1 year ago

Why are the budgets for operating these so expensive? The numbers in the article are staggering

micah94• 1 year ago

I think like they said, it's people. The JWST has "17 different modes" (yeah, I wish I knew what that meant exactly), but it sounds complicated. For all our tech, the bottom line is it requires humans to calibrate this thing and keep it that way (or one of 17 different ways) depending on the science that needs done.

magicalhippo• 1 year ago

The JWST has "17 different modes" (yeah, I wish I knew what that meant exactly)

It's explained in the user documentation[1]. You did read the documentation right?

For example[2]:

JWST Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) has 5 observing modes: imaging, coronagraphy, grism wide field slitless spectroscopy, time-series imaging, and grism time series.

With further details for each in subsections.

[1] https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/

[2] https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-near-infrared-camera/nircam...

mastermage2• 1 year ago

Because these are some of the most complicated and technically advanced pieces of technology that we have ever created.

To communicate with them we have a worldwide array of massive satellite dishes (Deep Space Network) which needs to be operated part of the cost is operating that. Then there is the scientist using the data. These are some of the greatest scientists in the world they are getting paid well enough. Then there is the engineers which make sure the spacecraft operates correctly which are expensive good engineers are expensive.and obviously all the other costs associated with it like facility, technology electricity etc.

cosmotic2• 1 year ago

We have multiple single humans with net worths over a thousand times their budget. The only thing that's staggering is what's getting priority over these monumental scientific achievements.

minebreaker• 1 year ago

This comment makes me wonder, why don't those rich people make space telescopes just for fun? That's definitely what I would do. Besides, it must be a way funnier than buying Twitter.

nashashmi2• 1 year ago

You just compared a person's entire lifetime worth of savings and investments to an annual budget.

UltraSane• 1 year ago

Lots of highly paid people are needed to run them.

bravesoul22• 1 year ago

It is incredible value for money. It's one of the few non-bullshit industries.

madaxe_again2• 1 year ago

$60M a year goes to Northrop just to ensure they’ll answer the phone if they’re needed.

thangalin• 1 year ago

In March, 2024 the US Department of Defense fiscal year 2025 budget request was $849.8 billion. The 2024 JWST budget was 0.022% of that.

https://nasawatch.com/exploration/ernst-stuhlinger

madaxe_again2• 1 year ago

You’re being downvoted for asking a reasonable question, sadly.

The numbers are staggering. The answer is mostly “Northrop Grumman”, “cost plus”, and “cover your ass”.

The sunk costs are >$10bn. Nobody wants to be the guy who cut the flight operations team from 200 people (!) and have the thing go offline and unrecoverable.

While the cuts are very much in the category of “closing the stable door after the horse has bolted”, if there’s a silver lining it’s that perhaps it will lead to a more cost-conscious approach for future missions - ie “how can we automate station keeping”, or “do we really need six people to watch a thermal map”, or “perhaps we should look at alternatives to DSN”.

It’s an artefact of a system evolved to never take risks, to shelter congressional pork, and to externalise liability onto padded contracts, born out of Cold War thinking - when JWST was conceived (1992), the Berlin Wall had only just fallen. It was meant to launch in 2005.

_Algernon_2• 1 year ago

A failure is highly costly to NASA in terms of public support, so everything is incredibly over-engineered. That's also why failures are rare.

derektank• 1 year ago

Talk about penny wise, pound foolish. We spent $10B putting the JWST in space and now we're going to underutilize it to save .4% of that? Dumb.

bravesoul22• 1 year ago

The idiocracy is a playbook.

maxglute2• 1 year ago

Time to spin up a patreon... or onlyfans.

minraws• 1 year ago

I would pay for Hubble cam videos lmao

aitchnyu• 1 year ago

IIRC Carl Sagan saw a spacecraft which had a potentially long life had it not run out of fuel. If he knew it was a Mercedes-level of money in advance, he would have raised it out of pocket.

maxglute2• 1 year ago

Yeah, as non American, only indirect way I can contribute to NASA is to buy some official merch, but I would not mind throwing some $ to sustain/extend some ongoing programs operation costs.

october8140• 1 year ago

This is dumb that it's even an issue. But in lieu of an administration change, could they "rent" them out? Like rich institutions could either pay for what they were already planning to do or they could request a different mission/objective.

somenameforme5• 1 year ago

There's far less interest in this than you'd expect. The Arecibo Telescope [1] was as famous as they come and was the largest single aperture telescope (> 300m) until 2016 when China surpassed it with FAST, which is just real life having some artistic foreshadowing. Opened in 1963, it was iconic and show up in various major movies like James Bond Goldeneye, Species, and contact. Yet it was nonetheless left to rot for a lack of interest in paying the low millions of dollars it'd cost to maintain it, all the while we spend trillions of dollars on wars half-way around the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Telescope

Sammi• 1 year ago

Wow there are actual videos of the collapse at the end of the history section.

dylan604• 1 year ago

Aricebo did not produce the same kind of imagination inspiring images that Hubble or JWST do. Aricebo lost out on it was too nerdy in its science where the visible spectrum platforms can also reach a more artsy demographic.

Compare Arecibo: https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/historic-space-ima...

To JWST/Hubble: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=Hubble+and+JWST+images&ia=ima...

devjab• 1 year ago

Can someone help a Danish person understand these cuts? I dislike the current government of USA, but it's not like I can't see the motivation behind wanting Greenland and all the other things they do. Reductions on USA space supremacy is the one area I really can't see a reason behind. Like who benefits from this? In the grander scheme of the entire USA budget these cuts aren't going to be meaningful, if anything, it seems like a waste to not utilize something you've already spend the majority of it's life time cost to get up there.

Hopefully it will lead to a situation where the freed time will be rented out. I mean, xuntian won't be capable of replacing James Webb since it's meant to complement rather than rival.

Is it part of the anti-science? Do they hope they can contract stuff out to the private sector? Or what?

burnt-resistor• 1 year ago

Dumb, rich Americans don't know how government works and don't understand what anything is for, even if it's critical for their survival or for the survival of millions of others, or crucial for future economic investment and prosperity. They just want to Retire All Government Employees (RAGE) because this is a utopian libertarian belief that "government is bad" and "costs money for no benefit". That, somehow, everything would be "perfect without government". They feel they are entitled to change everything according to their (uninformed) ideas because they are special and important by being rich. It's way past neoliberal austerity by reckless leadership making massive changes without being careful.

They've never heard of the problems with utopias or throwing out babies with the bathwater.

rsynnott2• 1 year ago

Quite a lot of the US right-wing is of the opinion that, basically, science is bad and shouldn't happen, or at the very least that only ideologically correct science should happen (for instance see https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doge-mischaracterizes-study-as-... - while part of the story there is that, unsurprisingly, a Musk thing is really incompetent, they were _trying_ to do an ideological purge).

NASA is particularly vulnerable to this because so much of NASA's science is related to climate and weather, and a large part of the US right is still doggedly pretending that global warming isn't happening.

coldpie2• 1 year ago

Yes. Despite what others are saying, the people making these decisions are not stupid. This is part of a decades-long, coordinated plan to sow distrust in experts, so people will vote against their own interests to ensure the wealthy & powerful remain so.

It's plainly true that spending several billion preventing climate change now, will prevent having to spend several trillion dollars later. There is no debate about that. But the people with the billions now do not want to give it up, so they have spent decades destroying trust in experts, so people will be tricked into voting for their children to spend trillions later, so that the current billionaires don't have to spend anything now.

It's the same thing pushing anti-vaccine views, even though people getting needlessly sick is obviously bad for the economy. Don't trust your doctor, "do your own research" because you know better than the experts, etc etc. It's all part of getting people to vote against their own interests. A stupid population is easier for the powerful to maintain control over than an educated one.

perihelions3• 1 year ago

There is no motivation, no plan; it's simple apathy that does this. This is an administration staffed, by design, by incompetent people overseeing public agencies they have no familiarity with. Their shared zeitgeist is "government is the Enemy and must be destroyed". In this sociology, it's an act of disloyalty to be seen to understand, to advocate for and side with, a government institution and its public service.

Loyalty to US science research (like any other US government work) is at odds with loyalty to MAGA: it's a zero-sum question, you're with us or against us. Isaacman failed this test—was too enthusiastic about space science.

_Algernon_2• 1 year ago

It's not apathy, it is weaponized incompetence. It was a contributing factor to Chernobyl. It is funny how the US is so opposed to communism, but copies the mistakes of the soviet union.

Replace 'worked in a shoe factory' with 'were a reality TV star', 'was a fox news agitprop host', or similar for any of the current US leadership in the scene from Chernobyl and it fits like a glove.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idb_qsAAe1c

schmidtleonard• 1 year ago

They've been at this for a while, but we had a long way to fall. Still do, but we're speeding up, that's for sure.

My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub - Grover Norquist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

roywiggins2• 1 year ago

Their shared zeitgeist is "government is the Enemy and must be destroyed"

Except for ICE, which is getting many billions of dollars.

pfdietz2• 1 year ago

Science benefits globally, not locally, and the current US government considers such positive externalities to have no importance. Arguments from prestige also get no traction.

Given the US fiscal situation, the benefit is perceived to be the reduction in cost.

There has been a presumption that science is locally important, but this presumption is being questioned, and needs to be better defended.

Other such globalist endeavors, like being world policeman, are also being questioned.

Steltek• 1 year ago

The US "fiscal situation" is a creation of the same sabotage-driven administration. Extreme tax cuts, deferred maintenance, and a bone-chilling police state apparatus is a sure fire way to destroy your economy.

polski-g2• 1 year ago

100% of our tax revenue goes to welfare. All other spending is deficit financed. Politicians are limited in what they can cut.

hydrogen7800• 1 year ago

Money is fungible. How can you assign some expenditures to revenue, and others to debt?

varispeed• 1 year ago

Trump’s administration - stacked with figures who openly parrot Kremlin talking points - doesn’t need to fly a Russian flag to serve Moscow’s interests. Undermining NASA, cutting science funding, and hobbling strategic assets like the James Webb isn’t just budget theatre - it’s part of a broader effort to erode US soft power, fracture alliances, and retreat from global leadership. The US got pwned by Russia and security services are stuck in a paper bag.

ajkjk• 1 year ago

the greenland thing is a joke, they don't actually want it or care at all, they just want to seem strong and assertive. things are not done for logical or personally-beneficial reasons here.

zamadatix• 1 year ago

I'm sure those reasons come into play as well but hell even I'd want the US to go for Greenland if it was actually available.

jccalhoun• 1 year ago

Does it make them money? No? Is it something that will make the conservative base unhappy if we eliminate it? No? Then eliminate it. Greenland is about shipping lanes and minerals.

EcommerceFlow• 1 year ago

Conservative ideology views government research as inefficient compared to private sector research, something I generally agree with. The evidence for this in regards to space is very clear IMO. SpaceX, with 8,000 employees and a fraction of government space budgets, now controls 95%+ of all orbit launches worldwide. They outcompete entire continents.

There is no risk structure within government research, and NASA's results of the past few decades shows this. No one paid the price for the SLS being so overpriced, delayed, etc.

pintxo2• 1 year ago

If SpaceX had to distribute their spending like NASA across states/senators/political influence, I doubt they would be anywhere near were they are today. I wouldn’t call this a failure of public science/research/development per se. It‘s a failure of democracy, but maybe it’s also a feature?

atmavatar• 1 year ago

What you're missing is that SpaceX could do this because NASA had already done all the difficult research. SpaceX is so successful because it does what private industry does really well: start with something that has already been proven possible and make little improvements on the fringes to streamline and profit from it.

What SpaceX has done is very valuable - let's make no mistake about that. But without decades of NASA experience and subsequent hand-holding with SpaceX engineers, SpaceX wouldn't exist.

NASA is a vehicle for pure scientific research, which is something private industry is absolutely terrible at. Let's be real: as much bluster as Elon has about going to Mars, it's going to take an organization like NASA to do it first before a private company like SpaceX ever attempts to do so.

foogazi• 1 year ago

Conservative ideology views government research as inefficient compared to private sector research, something I generally agree with.

This ignores political goals (Moon landing, DARPA, state funding of education) - what does space exploration look like in the 50s, 60s ?

qwertylicious• 1 year ago

Conservative ideology views government research as inefficient compared to private sector research, something I generally agree with.

I'd agree that's generally true when a profit motive is identifiable.

Absent that, if left to the private sector, the research simply doesn't get done at all.

The evidence for this in regards to space is very clear IMO

You have an incredibly narrow view of what space "research" involves. It's not just about putting payloads in LEO. Were it up to the private sector, the HST wouldn't exist at all.

Whether that's good or bad is a philosophical discussion, but personally, I believe science should be about more than just what is profitable.

(and that's ignoring that, as others have pointed out, SpaceX stands on the shoulders of government-funded giants)

The reality is there's room for both government-funded and private research, and to imply otherwise... well, let's just say we're living in a time of extremely narrow, black-and-white, polarized thinking, and this is an excellent example.

thomastjeffery• 1 year ago

None of this is supposed to make sense.

Trump proved to the Republican party that a politician only needs one thing to win: engagement. What's the most engaging policy? Bullshit.

Bullshit gives you free advertising. Bullshit makes all of your political rivals fight you, which makes them look bad. Better yet, your political rivals get busy fighting the bullshit itself, leaving you free to shovel more. There is no such thing as winning a fight in politics: you only win the vote.

Most voters in the US are convinced that there is nothing more to politics than bullshit anyway. This division is rooted in our two-party system. Because of first-past-the-post voting, this is a mathematical inevitability: every vote is a vote against whoever you dislike more strongly. Remember: dislike is not generated by valid criticism as well as it is generated by bullshit engagement. Politics in the US is a team sport, and nothing more.

gosub100• 1 year ago

There is an incredible amount of waste in the US government (both state and federal), almost by design. Departments get fixed budgets for the year. If they don't spend it, their budget for the next year is reduced by that amount. This obviously leads to all kind of perverse incentives to waste resources.

The second factor is politics. The progressive party in the US is trying so hard to be the "good guy" vs Big Bad Trump. Much of this is manufactured outrage, expertly crafted to win elections. ( However, some of it is true. There's some quote out there that the best lies have some grain of truth in them).

So when any conservative actor makes an effort to reign in egregious waste, the opposing party uses their best tactic: claiming victimhood. It's never the waste that is reigned in, no. The cuts always go directly to the most disparaged, "under-served" weakest segment of whatever population they can apply it to. In fact, this party doesn't even acknowledge that there is gov waste at all, or that any of it is borne by the taxpayers, thanks to MMT.

tl;dr there are incredibly wealthy political factions that want Trump out. Any move he makes will be amplified and mischaracterized to maximize outrage and retaliation. You cannot trust the media anymore, sadly.

nojonestownpls• 1 year ago

There has always been a significant section of the US public that's anti-science, and would have posed a strong obstruction to funding any of the space achievements of the 20th century - if not for the fact that the Soviet Union demonstrated space supremacy first. Because of that, space research and technology was made palatable to this demographic by making it a "let's show them commies" thing.

The momentum from that kept things going for a while after the Soviet Union fell, but the inertia has been running out and anti-science sentiment has been raising to the surface in its full form again. The sad truth is that it will most likely be at least another decade to swing things around again, if it's possible at all.

jve• 1 year ago

As I understand, NASA ain't the only party involved with James Webb Telescope - there is ESA and CSA (Europe/Canada) involved here. So... do they get the opportunity to take over those particular operations?

vjvjvjvjghv3• 1 year ago

Unfortunately the Europeans don't really have the courage to step up.

rsynnott2• 1 year ago

ESA already has at least three other major projects (the Venus probe, the much-delayed LISA, and something else) wherein NASA is, or at least was going to be, a junior partner, so if ESA has to pick up the slack on any joint projects, it'll probably prioritise those.

(LISA is a particularly ridiculous case. It was pitched in _1997_ as a joint ESA/NASA mission, was finally picked up in the noughties, NASA pulled out in 2011 due to budget cuts, LISA was cut down and then cancelled in favour of JUICE (which itself was a redesign of _another_ joint mission that NASA pulled out of), then LISA was brought back a few years later, with NASA as a junior partner, and an MoA was finally signed last year. Now the NASA side has apparently been cut, though the ESA side is continuing, and who knows, maybe eventually it'll be launched...)

Honestly, ESA should probably consider just stopping doing joint missions with NASA; NASA is just too vulnerable to political interference.

merman2• 1 year ago

These figures are not proof of an anti-science administration (I’m not disputing that the administration is anti-science, just disputing that this budget is evidence of that)

If you compare Biden’s FY2022 budget estimates to this budget, it matches almost exactly (Webb 175M, Hubble 85M)

adgjlsfhk1• 1 year ago

what the hell are you talking about? The budget cut for Webb (i.e. the new satellite) literally from the article you are reading is 187M to 140M. If Biden's FY2022 budget was 172M, that's 189M 2026 (from inflation), so this remains a 25% cut.

merman2• 1 year ago

Bad reading on my part. It is much lower than Biden’s

horns4lyfe• 1 year ago

Reading through these comments, I’m firmly convinced no one read the actual article. Is this just Bluesky now with a twist?

sjones671• 1 year ago

Agreed

davidcbc• 1 year ago

Another factor is funding cuts to both telescopes contained in the Trump administration’s budget proposal for 2026 — especially JWST, which would see its operating budget cut by 25 percent relative to planned 2024 operations, from $187 million to $140 million.

weberer• 1 year ago

Its weird just how resistant people here are to admitting that inflation is a big problem.

tomhow• 1 year ago

We dislike it as much as you that it seems so difficult to have a sober discussion about political topics here these days, but it's probably more related to the state of the world, and particularly the prevailing style of politics and media we're living with. We'd love it if HN could be better than other discussion platforms, but try as we might, we can't help but be affected by what's going on in the rest of the world.

Rather than condemning the whole community like this, which is against the guidelines, it would be more helpful to highlight the important parts of the article that you think others are missing.

spo81rty• 1 year ago

Why does it take 300-400 employees to run a telescope?

As a taxpayer, that's what I want to know.

roywiggins2• 1 year ago

It's a $10 billion piece of hardware parked 930,000 miles away.

Reid said STScI does not yet have a specific plan to deal with JWST’s budget shortfalls, but it will almost certainly involve reducing staff.
“It’s fewer people, really,” Neill Reid, multi-mission project scientist at STScI, told Astronomy. “[JWST has] got 17 different modes. Each of those modes needs people to support it, to calibrate it, to keep it going. So, if you cut the funding, you have fewer people. And you can’t ask people to do twice as much work. So what will happen is that there will be potentially fewer modes available. There will be less user support.”

coldpie2• 1 year ago

That's an interesting question! Can you tell us what research you've done to try to answer it? It's public funds, so there's probably some documentation for what jobs were created to support the telescope.

James Webb, Hubble space telescopes face reduction in operations

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