The Chandra X-ray telescope, seen here in an artist’s impression, remains in good health after 25 years of operation. Credit: NASA/James Vaughan
Scientists breathed a collective sigh of relief last week when NASA announced that the Chandra X-ray Observatory had been spared the strain, at least for another year. It was a sharp change from plans announced in March to dismantle the space telescope by December.
Much of the credit for the 11th-hour stay of execution goes to a grassroots movement that has dramatically demonstrated how public opinion can influence science funding. After receiving news last spring that Chandra would be fired, scientists and the public erupted in protest. Organized in part under the banner and hashtag #SaveChandra, letters, petitions and phone calls poured into Congress.
In July, the Appropriations Committees in both the House and Senate presented symbolic budget proposals. The Senate committed $72 million (which would represent full funding) toward Chandra’s “transformative discoveries,” and the House introduced an authorization bill directing NASA “to take no action to reduce or otherwise preclude the continuation” of Chandra ahead of the agency’s three-year review late next year.
Although the federal budget for 2025 remains in limbo and will not be approved until January, congressional resistance appears to have made a difference. An announcement from NASA was expected in September, but no further information was revealed until a virtual town hall meeting on October 23, when NASA Astrophysics Division Director Mark Clampin said key decisions about Chandra’s future would not will be taken until Congress appropriates funds for the project. Fiscal year 2025.
This amounts to a temporary reprieve for the observatory. Clampin confirmed during the meeting that Chandra will receive sufficient funding next year to carry out much of its scientific work and that there will be no further immediate layoffs. Sixty-eight scientists and technicians, about 40 percent of Chandra’s entire staff, would be fired by the end of November.
Even before the threat of cancellation, the Observatory had already suffered cuts to its operating budget, including as recently as last year. This required both the layoff of some staff and a significant reduction in the so-called general observatories and archival research funding that the mission awards annually to the astronomical community across the United States.
Scientists say funding for the archives – which supports efforts to analyze and find hidden findings in existing data – is an important part of the mission’s overall scientific return.
“NASA has decided not to restore full funding to scientists who analyze Chandra data or develop theories to help understand the results,” notes David Pooley of Trinity University in San Antonio. “Support for the X-ray community has remained unchanged for decades and is now half of what it used to be. This is having a devastating effect on the US X-ray astronomy community.”
Protecting a legacy
Chandra’s potential demise is particularly galling to researchers because the telescope continues to operate normally and is capable of making observations at resolutions that no other X-ray observatory can achieve. Patrick Slane, director of the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says whether or not Chandra gets a longer extension depends on NASA’s priorities.
“It’s not really a question of how important Chandra is to the community, how healthy Chandra is, or how productive he continues to be,” he wrote in an email to Astronomy. “They’re all pretty well known. The question is how NASA will prioritize its support of its portfolio of initiatives, some of which are operational and some of which involve plans for the future.”
Both Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope are more than 25 years old. As the venerable pair continues to produce vital science, they are competing with newer projects that demand ever-larger slices of the budget pie. As budgets get tighter and tighter, both telescopes could eventually work on borrowed time.
Astrophysicists like Laura Lopez of Ohio State University hope that day is far away. Chandra remains crucial to his research, and has been throughout the 20 years he has studied X-ray-emitting objects, from supernovae to quasars. As co-principal investigator of the upcoming Chandra Legacy Program – which she describes as one of the deepest programs ever attempted with Chandra – Lopez says she is relieved but fearful of future cuts.
“We’re just happy that no one had to be fired and that they will be collecting new data,” he says. “Just knowing that it is capable of continuing is a big deal since there is nothing on the horizon that can do anything like this from a scientific perspective.”
The Chandra Legacy program will examine two enormous drivers of galactic evolution: the baryonic energy cycle – the exchange of matter between interstellar gas clouds and stars that drives the formation of galaxies – and the energy feedback from supermassive black holes at the centers of “active” galaxies ” in galaxy clusters. It will require two years of sustained funding to complete.
While Lopez and some other scientists remain concerned, Slane expresses reserved optimism. “The very significant reductions in budget guidance received earlier this year were unexpected and remain a cause for concern going forward,” he says, “but we are confident that the senior review process will lead to continued healthy support for Chandra,” referring to a NASA process that weighs the scientific value of various programs.
If the outspoken and numerous supporters who have written to Congress have a say, Chandra may yet get a second lease on life.
