James Webb’s space telescope is depicted here before being folded for launch. Credit: NASA
The teams that manage Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)-the two most requested observers of NASA and among its most scientifically productive missions-are preparing to reduce the operations due to the deficiencies of the loan, the officials said last week during the summer encounter of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) of Anchorage, Alaska.
The comments arrived in a town hall of June 10 held by the Space Telescope Science Institute (SSCI), which is based in Baltimore, Maryland, and manages JWST and Hubble for NASA.
Speaking at the Town Hall, Neill Reid, a scientist of the STSCI multi-Mission Project, said that the Institute is examining a probable reduction of about 25-35 percent in scientific operations for JWST. It is likely that the Institute will reduce or abandon support for several Hubble tools; They will still be available for observations, but the telescope staff will no longer be able to support them with regular calibration updates.
The threats to JWST and Hubble are due to a combination of factors, some of which have been prepared for years. In the last year, NASA and SSCI officials have warned against budget challenges and operational reductions due to flat budgets and inflation.
Another factor is the financing of the cuts to both telescopes contained in the budget proposal of the Trump administration for 2026, in particular JWST, which would see its operational budget reduced by 25 percent compared to the expected operations of 2024, from $ 187 to $ 140 million.
Hubble cut – down from $ 93.3 million in planned funds for 2024 to $ 85 million in 2026 – is less surprised. The 2025 budget request from the Biden Administration, which has never been issued, also contained a planned reduction in Hubble funding, up to $ 87.5 million in 2026. In 2024, NASA conducted a review of the Hubble operations, trying to reduce costs.
A document published on the NASA website on May 30th states that the Trump’s budget proposal “supports the continuous operations” of Hubble and JWST “at slightly reduced budget levels that take operational efficiency in the 2026 and outside exercise.”
Budget problems
Speaking at the Aas Town Hall, Neill Reid in Stsci said that Hubble’s budget has remained essentially flat in the last ten years while inflation has increased, with consequent decrease in the spending power of 30 percent. Any additional cuts to the Hubble budget “will lead to a significant loss for science,” said a STSCI slide.
Part of the challenge that Hubble must face, launched in 1990, is that “she lasted longer than people expected,” Reid said Astronomy. “Nasa is looking at how much money she has. And she is trying to do as many things as possible. … If Hubble’s budget is built, it would cut something else.” Stsci made the Hubble operation more thin, but in the end, the only way to save more money is “to stop doing things,” Reid said.
Unlike Hubble, JWST is still in the middle of his privileged mission. The telescope, which cost $ 10 billion to be built, was launched in 2021 and began the operations the following year. NASA originally hoped that the telescope worked for 10 years, but thanks to a highly accurate launch, there is enough fuel on board to last for more than 20 years.
Although the cuts to the budget proposed by the Trump Administration are rejected by the congress, JWST was already facing budgetary pressures. This is partly due to the fact that the balance of the Observatory operations established by NASA in 2011 was idealistically low, Reid said.
“There was a solid amount of optimism that has entered some of these, and there was also an inflation,” Reid said. “So you have the [presidential budget request] This comes and cuts more. So we could try to reduce operations from 25 to 35 percent next year. “
Reid has said that Stsci does not yet have a specific plan to face JWST’s budget deficiencies, but it will almost certainly imply the reduction of staff.
“He is less people, really,” said Neill Reid, a scientist of the Multi-Mission Project of Ssci, Astronomy. “[JWST has] I had 17 different ways. Each of these modalities needs people to support it, calibrate it, to continue. So if you cut the funding, you have fewer people. And you can’t ask people to do twice the job. So what will happen is that there will potentially less available modes. There will be less user support. “
It could also take less time to take observations, Reid said. “You could end up being much less efficient. There are fewer people working on programming. So you may not be able to put things together in the same way.” Overall, Reid said: “It will affect how we can help the community to make the entire range of sciences that Webb is capable”.
Scientific work horses
As for Hubble, STSCI says that it will not make any changes to the telescope operations until it receives the “contractual direction” from NASA to do it. Stsci did not say that he intends to reduce the methods or tools available on Hubble and will be able to manage some basic quality checks, such as trying to reduce hot pixels. “At the moment there is a lot of work right now to make sure we are in the best position to do it,” Reid said.
But the institute will not be able to provide calibration updates for some of the Hubble tools. These regularly updated files represent changes to the sensitivity of detectors and are necessary to ensure that the measurements of the brightness of the telescope are accurate. Instead, Ssci will rely on the wider community of scientists who apply for Hubble observations and use the telescope data “for a type of self -sufficiency for those tools,” said Reid.
In addition to the prolific presence of the media of the telescopes, both hubble and jwst are highly scientifically productive. Hubble, who recently celebrated its 35th anniversary, last year produced a record of 1,073 peer-reviewed publications. His orbit is decaying, but the telescope is not expected to return the atmosphere until 2033. JWST is better behaving than what Nasa expected, has produced about 1,200 items since the start of the operations in 2022 and is still increasing its production of science.
Reid observed that the enormous cuts that the Trump administration is targeting for the NASA science as a whole (a 47 %cut) and the National Science Foundation (a 56 %cut), which “a certain amount of survival”.
Compared to NSF, Reid said: “I think we are in a slightly different situation. But it is up to us to reject and underline the importance of NASA’s scientific leadership for our representatives. You could also tell them that science makes America safer, stronger and more prosperous, if you feel that it was worth it.”
