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Space & Planetary Science

JWST's Latest Victim: Shutting Down Opportunity

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 13, 2014
Filed under , , , , , ,

Mars Rover Opportunity Faces New Threat: Budget Ax, Discovery
“NASA’s baseline budget for the year beginning Oct. 1 pulls the plug on the 10-year-old Mars rover Opportunity, newly released details of the agency’s fiscal 2015 spending plan show. The plan, which requires Congressional approval, also anticipates ending the orbiting Mars Odyssey mission on Sept. 30, 2016. “There are pressures all over the place,” NASA’s planetary science division director Jim Green said during an advisory council committee teleconference call on Wednesday. NASA currently spends about $13 million a year to support Opportunity.”
Keith’s note: Just as JWST cost growth is killing off valuable existing missions that cost a pittance to continue – and stiffling others from even being started – SLS will soon start to eat Human Spaceflight’s budgetary lunch – and the 2024 ISS extension will become less and less of a certainty

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

20 responses to “JWST's Latest Victim: Shutting Down Opportunity”

  1. BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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    Be interesting to see the breakdown of annual operating costs for these missions.
    Seems like SLS, Orion and JWST are killing off most other missions present and future for NASA.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Unfortunately, the SLS, sometimes mocked as the Senate Launch System, is largely political. Billions upon billions of dollars spent on a largely expendable launch system based on warmed over 1960’s and 1970’s technology isn’t a bargain in this day and age.

      It’s time for NASA to start acting like NACA did, which is to provide technology development in support for commercial aerospace endeavors. There is no reason NASA needs its own, government owned and government operated launch system in this day and age. SLS is pork for the old Saturn/Shuttle congressional districts, plain and simple.

      Repeating the mistakes of Saturn V and the shuttle (too large and too low a flight rate) is a financial disaster in the making.

    • moon2mars says:
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      Operating costs for Opportunity was $13.2 million FY 13.

  2. Rocky J says:
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    Shutting down Opportunity. Isn’t this about on the order of the Red Sox selling Ruth to the Yankees? Well, I guess they could uplink a program of calisthenics that Opportunity performs periodically to keep it mechanically limber and assure its electronics remain healthy. That is, it would go into a safe mode of sorts until funds are available. The robustness of the electronics of these Mars vehicles, satellites and rovers are truly remarkable. The decision to mothball, Opportunity and shutdown Mars Odyssey are really last resorts given the funds made available to these directorates and groups. Unless guilt or more reasonable decision making besets legislators in Washington, SLS and Orion will continue and funding levels will lead to these mothballings, cancellations and end of missions.

    • kcowing says:
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      No logic to be found in NASA’s thinking. Don’t go looking for it …

    • David_Morrison says:
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      The mission ops costs are incurred on Earth and are almost entirely salaries for people. You can’t mothball people. Once a team is gone, you can’t bring it back, even if the spacecraft is still fine.

  3. JadedObs says:
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    Hmmm interesting math – has JWST grown since the replay? Not that I’ve heard. Is Space Science still getting $5B annually? Yes. Has NASA’s budget grown? No, it’s actually down slightly. Did anyone ever expect Opportunity to last a decade? No… Was Mars Odyssey expected to last this long? No… Do we have a new orbiter with even more sophistication as well as ESA assets there that were not available when Odyssey was launched? Yes. Do we have a two ton nuclear powered rover on the surface with another one under development – yes. So what caused the budget pressure – JWST or the fact that we are adding new capabilities faster than the old ones are dying off?

    If we were to abandon a difficult place to reach with no replacement in the pipeline – like Cassini at Saturn – THAT would be a tragedy. But blame JWST? And if JWST was killed, can you imagine the lament when Hubble eventually dies? It’s a flat/declining budget; if we don’t kill programs WAY beyond their planned missions, all will suffer.

    • objose says:
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      “we are adding new capabilities faster than the old ones are dying off?”
      Well spoken reply. Different perspective. JWST was too ambitious for the time, and promised too much for too little, but now, it must be preserved. I believe you are right. The anti SLS crowd is calling it “old Apollo tech,” but then cry when old Mars tech is shut down. The Shuttle program is gone, done over, even though the orbiters could still fly. It was a choice. Now there are other choices. I do not think we can imagine the science we will eventually get from JWST.

  4. Odyssey2020 says:
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    Didn’t Dan Goldin forewarn of these events?

  5. BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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    I wouldn’t call $17 billion a ‘stavation level budget’. It’s plenty but not if you squander it on cost-plus porkfest job programs.
    Btw, there’s a saying that goes along the lines of ‘presidents propose, congress disposes’. That should be a hint as to how things work so far as funding and programs go.

  6. stonemoma says:
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    It is a ordinary robbery: Give me you wallet or I shoot your ……
    For that strategy there are two possible answers:
    -Here is my wallet.
    -This is a bluff. We go now.
    So let’s wait for the outcome of the robbery.

  7. Michael Spencer says:
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    The President? Seriously? Ever heard of ‘starve the beast’?

  8. Todd Austin says:
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    Oh, you mean like Commercial Crew, that CONGRESS has funded at half the rate requested by the White House? Like that?

    Read your US Constitution. Congress sets the spending levels and appropriates the funds. All the White House can do is suggest, and this one has generally done the logical thing as recommended by experts when it comes to NASA’s budget.

  9. Anonymous says:
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    I don’t like cutting funds to Opportunity, but for Mars fans, do remember that Curiosity also ate a few planetary mission lunches during it’s development time, too (as will Mars 2020).

    • Rocky J says:
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      Yes. Pressures and criticism were rising for MSL and then along came JWST. There was an unspoken sigh of relief. Cost overruns of JWST made MSL look like the bush leagues. I hope 2020 does not overrun. They have something to prove – that the reuse of the proven design will cut costs for a second rover by $1 Billion. If they build it and it saves just $200 Million, that will leave an indelible mark on JPL and future claims of savings by reuse.

  10. JadedObs says:
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    Oversimplified, I agree and I’m sure the science is good but consider,what if we make a choice to keep Opportunity running and cance or don’t start something else to support that decision and then the rover dies of an unexpected cause on the first day of the new fiscal year. Budgeting is about prioritizing, it’s not optimal.

  11. savuporo says:
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    Will there be a private bid to transition over operations and keep it going ?

  12. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    I can’t help but shake my head in disbelief at this. This is a symptom of a slow-moving disaster at NASA and I fear it is only the beginning. More and more old but still-useful probes and programs are going to be shut down as the never-to-be-finished or utilised but politically-untouchable development programs consume more and more just in the effort to not fall further behind.

    I never used to believe the nay-sayers that said NASA would eventually consume and destroy itself. Now, I’m not so sure.