NASA Extends Lots Of Missions
New Horizons Receives Mission Extension to Kuiper Belt, Dawn to Remain at Ceres
“In addition to the extension of the New Horizons mission, NASA determined that the Dawn spacecraft should remain at the dwarf planet Ceres, rather than changing course to the main belt asteroid Adeona. Green noted that NASA relies on the scientific assessment by the Senior Review Panel in making its decision on which extended mission option to approve. “The long-term monitoring of Ceres, particularly as it gets closer to perihelion – the part of its orbit with the shortest distance to the sun — has the potential to provide more significant science discoveries than a flyby of Adeona,” he said. Also receiving NASA approval for mission extensions, contingent on available resources, are: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), the Opportunity and Curiosity Mars rovers, the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and NASA’s support for the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission.”
Has anyone seen the actual reviews? Or anything about funding levels? I can’t find anything online except the press release. That says the missions are approved for extended missions “contingent on available resources.”
They probably need Congress to approve the extensions in the 2017 FY budget. Shouldn’t be a real problem, these things usually go as NASA and the science community want.
Well, they don’t need to wait on Congress. In the past, NASA has announced extended mission approvals with planned or expected budgets (with the appropriate words about the funding being subject to changes bases on what Congress puts in the budget.) But the folks at headquarters are always struggling to deal with Congress’ continuing disfunction. So they may be trying something new.
Dealing with “…Congress’ continuing disfunction.”
So do we all.
Meanwhile we become accustomed to a crumbling infrastructure, to name but one additional consequence.
I believe that’s correct. I am familiar with the astrophysics division senior review. Very few of those missions are congressionally line-itemed. The senior review (and hence the mission extensions) are handled internally. Which is not to say that someone in the legislature won’t get a bee in their bonnet about the results and step in and line-item something. That does happen from time to time.
I imagine that this is high anxiety for many teams wanting both more science and, understandably, an idea of when to prepare the cv. But unlike past years when there were true nail biters like New Horizons I’ve not seen any real dissapointments.The Dawn mission has arguments on both sides, at least in terms of science; am I missing some true surprises?