Astronomers are rallying to save NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

All space missions come to an finish. Some die quietly of previous age, working out of gas or energy. Some go in a blaze of glory, plunging into an environment and burning up, sending again knowledge to the final. Others self-destruct, by no means reaching their meant targets — blowing up on the launch pad, or ending up as an unintended impression crater on an alien world.

However earlier this yr, when NASA introduced that the Chandra X-ray telescope was going through the tip of its days, it wasn’t for any of these causes. The telescope was totally operational, persevering with to supply cutting-edge science. Relatively, NASA was going through price range shortfalls — and it deemed the observatory expendable.

Within the historical past of NASA, maybe no totally operational mission this huge and productive has ever been scrapped just because the company determined to not foot the invoice.

Chandra has essentially the most resolving energy of any X-ray telescope ever constructed, and for 25 years has supplied astronomers with penetrating views of the invisible universe, together with stellar explosions, proof of black holes, and different unique objects. Right now it stays one of the crucial productive and oversubscribed observatories in NASA’s portfolio. In 2022, NASA reviewers rated Chandra amongst its most profitable ongoing packages on par with Hubble.

However in March, officers put it on the chopping block, scheduling 80 layoffs representing most of its working workforce as quickly as September. That very same month, NASA requested simply $41 million for Chandra within the company’s 2025 price range — a 40 % discount — so as to start an “orderly mission drawdown to minimal operations.”

The transfer has sparked a exceptional wave of protest from the worldwide astronomical neighborhood — and it has made an impression. At the very least one current interview given by NASA administrator Invoice Nelson provides hope that the telescope may be saved. For now, Chandra stays in limbo, however NASA is anticipated to make an announcement subsequent month concerning the mission’s short-term destiny.

To many researchers, chopping prices by concentrating on a productive mission like Chandra is unnecessary. Chandra’s annual working price range is $68 million, simply 1.8 % of the total quantity that NASA has spent on the telescope since 1999. One scientist likened killing the mission to having a lovely residence in nice form with a paid-off mortgage, and burning it right down to keep away from a yr of utility payments.

Chandra additionally maintains U.S. management in X-ray astronomy, a subject that U.S. researchers based in 1963. Scientists say that Chandra’s sudden shutdown would go away a discovery hole for many years and that European and Chinese language counterparts are not any match for Chandra’s sensitivity and determination.

A technological marvel

When Chandra rocketed to space July 23, 1999, aboard the space shuttle Columbia, it was a revolutionary advance over the earlier technology of X-ray telescopes.

“Chandra is a technological marvel,” says David Pooley, an astronomer at Trinity College in San Antonio, Texas, citing the distinctive smoothness of its 4 concentric pairs of mirrors. In contrast to conventional telescopes, they’re oriented at extraordinarily shallow angles so as to seize glancing X-rays that might in any other case shoot instantly via the glass. “No different X-ray telescope has had a spatial decision approaching Chandra, ever,” says Pooley. “It is vitally troublesome to make mirrors that focus X-rays that tightly.”

Solely three years after launch, the observatory proved its value by serving to Riccardo Giacconi win the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics for his Chandra-based analysis on the ubiquity of black holes within the universe. Since then, it has captured the shock waves of supernovae, the cooling charge of a neutron star, and the radiation pulses of black hole accretion disks.

Nevertheless it’s not the telescope’s legacy that makes its termination galling to researchers — it’s the misplaced potential for continued operations. With 10 years’ value of gas nonetheless aboard and no severe mechanical points, Chandra may final via to the subsequent solar most a decade from now, in accordance with scientists.

Inside weeks of NASA’s announcement in March, a motion known as #SaveChandra launched, energizing scientists and the general public worldwide with viral movies, petitions, and letters to Washington.

The pushback has had some impact. In July, Senate and Home appropriations committees handed supportive price range proposals, with the Senate committing $72 million towards Chandra’s “transformative discoveries,” whereas citing its very important synergy with the James Webb House Telescope. On July twenty fifth, a Home authorization invoice was launched that particularly directed NASA to “take no motion to scale back or in any other case preclude continuation” of Chandra earlier than the company’s three-year assessment late subsequent yr. Though the precise 2025 federal price range continues to be pending, strain from Congress might already be having an impression on NASA planning.

On Aug. 13, NASA administrator Invoice Nelson informed Ars Technica that the company would attempt for a brand new price range past their unique request of $41 million and that layoffs could be restricted.

“The entire science will probably be protected,” Nelson mentioned. For some, this gave the impression of victory. However scientists like Pooley — who helped creator a letter to NASA signed by over 700 astrophysicists all over the world — stay involved.

“The minimal price range actually needs to be up at $72 million,” Pooley tells Astronomy. “That’s what it takes to protect the science in addition to fund the scientists who’re analyzing the information.”

If Chandra is to be saved, there’s not way more budgetary fats to trim. A committee convened by NASA earlier this yr discovered that the Chandra Operations Management Middle outdoors Boston — the place dozens of specialists take shifts across the clock in a mission management room — was already working at a naked minimal. Since launch in 1999, the mission’s work drive has dropped 40 % as specialists turned ever extra environment friendly at mission planning and operations.

Nonetheless main the pack

The present price range shortfall will not be the primary menace to its existence Chandra has confronted. Initially meant for a mid-1987 launch, Chandra was sidelined by the 1986 Challenger catastrophe and the following budgetary constraints of rebuilding the House Shuttle Program. By 1992, a deepening nationwide monetary disaster almost canceled the undertaking altogether, then known as AXAF.

Designed to hold six mirror pairs, the telescope proved too costly and heavy for its personal good, so NASA officers opted to slash the design (and capabilities) to 2 mirror pairs and launch it on a Titan rocket. Frantic scientists negotiated a bigger, extra strong design of 4 mirror pairs that might match aboard a revived space shuttle.

Their large compromise was that Chandra could be relegated to a excessive Earth orbit greater than 80,000 miles (130,000 kilometers) away — far past a standard orbit of some hundred miles. This meant that costly servicing by space shuttle crews could be off the desk. Since crews had lately saved the Hubble House Telescope with in-flight repairs, it was an enormous gamble, however not less than Chandra would lastly make it into space.

In July 1999, astronomers watched with apprehension because the school-bus-sized observatory launched aboard the space shuttle Columbia.

In hindsight, Chandra’s distant trajectory proved providential. The 64-hour orbit locations the observatory far above Earth’s radiation belts for 55 hours at a time, facilitating undisturbed, multi-hour observations which have revealed spectacular buildings and revolutionized our understanding of cosmic life and demise.

Chandra’s trailblazing successes have made it clear to the remainder of the world that X-ray astronomy yields super dividends. The European House Company has dedicated over 1 billion euros to its subsequent X-ray flagship, Athena, and China is in scorching pursuit with an array of satellites and the current SVOM launch that duplicates NASA’s 20-year-old Swift mission, which focuses on short-lived gamma-ray bursts.

“None of them have the mix that Chandra does of excessive spatial decision and excessive spectral decision,” says Pooley. “That’s why it’s such a misguided transfer to chop Chandra. Nothing has been capable of match it for 25 years, and there’s nothing that may, for many years.”