[cracker]

Of all the things NASA does these days, it's the space telescopes that are paying off in terms of increasing human knowledge. I just read yesterday that the Chandra mission is being extended from five years to ten years because of the great results in the first two years.

I have mixed feelings about these budgetary games. NASA knows that the scopes are going to last for at least a decade, but they only plan a 3 year "mission" for a billion dollar scope to keep the budget down and win project approval from Congress. This is OK because it means that more scopes get funded. But the failure to build in the long-term funding means that expensive projects that are still producing good data (like a few of the recent planetary probes) get shut down to save a few million dollars. Dumb Dumb Dumb...

[anymouse]

That's why they should turn over older spacecraft operations to a university, that can use cheap student labor and get funding through either private or public sources. the science would have to stand up to peer review though.

[Moonman62]

But the failure to build in the long-term funding means that expensive projects that are still producing good data (like a few of the recent planetary probes) get shut down to save a few million dollars.

Which planetary probes would those be?