NASA Wants To Turn New Horizons Off

Keith’s note: A story is now widely circulating within the planetary science community that NASA SMD has asked for cost estimates to put the New Horizons spacecraft into hibernation. This would halt all Kuiper Belt science – which is an especially baffling thing for NASA to do since a Decadal Survey supported the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt in the first place. A fully functional, billion dollar mission is to be turned off for lack of a few million dollars – with no plan if or when to turn it back on. Space leaders have protested but that was answered with silence from NASA. In June you may recall that I posted “There May Be A Second Kuiper Belt And New Horizons Is Headed There“ that noted “In a meeting today of the NASA New Horizons Science Team a presentation strongly suggests that our solar system actually has a second Kuiper Belt.” Papers are in work but now NASA SMD wants to shut the spacecraft off before it can build on these findings or make any other discoveries. As I noted in “Hijacking New Horizons“ SMD wanted to get rid of the current New Horizons team and convert the mission into a heliophysics mission instead. Now, apparently, that idea has evaporated and, lacking a plan as to what to do next, shutting New Horizons off and disbanding its team is the only option Nicky Fox and her team can come up with. All for a few million dollars. What a waste of money. I hope GAO, OIG, and OGC are looking into this. I have to think that OSTP and NAC would find this to be problematical as well.