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Astronomy

WFIRST: White House Cuts, Congress Restores, NASA Forges Ahead

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 3, 2020
Filed under
WFIRST: White House Cuts, Congress Restores, NASA Forges Ahead

NASA Approves Development of Universe-Studying, Planet-Finding Mission
“The FY2020 Consolidated Appropriations Act funds the WFIRST program through September 2020. The FY2021 budget request proposes to terminate funding for the WFIRST mission and focus on the completion of the James Webb Space Telescope, now planned for launch in March 2021. The Administration is not ready to proceed with another multi-billion-dollar telescope until Webb has been successfully launched and deployed.”
FY 2021 Budget, OMB
“Consistent with prior budgets, the Budget provides no funding for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope”.
White House Wants To Kill WFIRST – Again (2019), earlier post
“The Budget proposes to terminate the WFIRST mission and instead focus on completing the delayed James Webb Space Telescope.”
AAS Officials Concerned with Proposed Cancellation of WFIRST, (2018), earlier post
“Sharing alarm voiced by other scientists, leaders of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) are expressing grave concern over the administration’s proposed cuts to NASA’s astrophysics budget and the abrupt cancellation of theWide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).”
More posts on WFIRST

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7 responses to “WFIRST: White House Cuts, Congress Restores, NASA Forges Ahead”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    I guess that Congress has decided that now that the JWST is close to flying (maybe) NASA needed another venture to generate repeated schedule delays and massive cost over runs that eat up the astrophysics budget to replace it.

    • Mal Peterson says:
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      The advisory science panel for astrophysics supported WFIRST in testimony before Congress appropriated the funds. Just saying you might want to affix the blame in the proper sphere of influence and decision-making. As I understand the 2021 budget decisions, the OMB put up a straw man to cover the desire to provide more funds for Lunar/Mars.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Not surprised, as they want their new observatory. But we will see if this turns into another JWST type of an endless sinkhole for money.

        As for the OMB story, it would be nice to see documentation for it.

    • fcrary says:
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      When Congress put the money back in the FY2020 budget, I believe they added some fairly harsh language (for an appropriations bill.) It boiled down to an order for NASA not to screw up WFIRST the way they did with JWST. I don’t remember the phrasing, but that was how I interpreted it.

  2. SpacecraftPerson says:
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    It makes no sense – the only people who would ever buy that we need to cancel WFIRST to get Webb flying, know nothing about either. GSFC has people work a particular phase for one mission, then a particular phase for the next mission. It’s like a conveyor belt. The entire point is to propose and design one while you’re building, finishing, and testing the previous one. That’s how it works! You can’t just take a WFIRST design engineer and put that person on JWST testing. The entire rationale was aimed at the public, not at NASA or any stakeholders.

    • fcrary says:
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      I’ve seen it work that way at other institutions, so I’m not surprised Goddard does it that way. This is often not true of smaller projects (individual instruments or sensors, or smaller spacecraft) nor is it true of the scientists involved. In any case, that “conveyor belt” approach simply isn’t viable if the budget won’t support multiple missions being developed and built in parallel.

      I think that’s the point. The administration isn’t claiming the putting WFIRST on hold will speed up JWST. I think they are saying Goddard, their contractors and the astrophysical community are only allowed to have one, $9 billion dollar, decade late disaster at a time. If the process at GSFC is geared towards multiple projects in parallel and in different phases, fine. But only if they can keep the schedule and budget under control.

  3. RocketScientist327 says:
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    You got the $$$ you can lobby congress to get your project funded too – no matter how much of a porker it is.